Who isn’t aware of web automation testing? It guarantees the smooth functioning and sustainability of your application. Selenium is one of the most commonly taken names in this field. But as a new tester, you might ask, “What is Selenium?”
It is a test suite that is designed to automate web apps for testing purposes. It also allows the testers to ensure the compatibility of web apps across multiple platforms and browsers.
Not familiar with Selenium’s features and offerings? Don’t worry! We are here for you! Our article will help you understand Selenium’s capabilities, components, and how to get started with it.
Table of Contents
We do not want to directly get into the complex details of Selenium. So, let us begin our discussion with the basics of Selenium. In layman’s terms, it is an open-source framework for automatically testing web apps. It allows you to write test scripts in multiple programming languages like Java, Ruby, and JavaScript.
To run the test cases on your chosen web applications, Selenium gives compatibility with multiple popular browsers like Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox. Let us shed more light on Selenium’s functioning by diverting our attention towards some of its major features:
As we already mentioned earlier, Selenium is a test suit consisting of multiple individual tools. All of these tools aim to help you at specific areas of the application testing process. To further improve your understanding of the multiple components of the Selenium test suite, we have mentioned them in detail below:
Under the hood, Selenium mainly operates by interacting with the browser’s native automation APIs. So, when you execute a test script, Selenium will send a command to the browser using WebDriver. The browser will then receive these commands and perform the desired actions. Some of the most commonly executed actions will include clicking a button or filling out a form.
After performing all of these actions, the browser will return the results back to Selenium so that you can analyze the performance of the target element.
To start automating your web application testing with Selenium, you need to go through a few prerequisites and also follow a few simple steps. To simplify this entire process for the new testers, we have mentioned all the intended steps in the required chronological order:
After wrapping up the prerequisites for the Selenium setup process, you can proceed toward the step that will help you to install and configure Selenium on your testing machine:
By now, you have successfully configured the Selenium testing environment. You are ready to write your first automation test script using Selenium. To simplify this process, we have mentioned a sample test script using the Java programming language to automate a Google search.
Now that we have analyzed how you can set up and execute your tests with Selenium, it is very important to go through some of the best practices that will help you to further refine your testing efficiency and also boost the quality of the application that you’re currently working on:
Apart from the basic testing capabilities, Selenium also offers various advanced features that will help you to further customize the testing environment and implement various features custom-designed for your testing project:
We suggest the testers to integrate Selenium with various cloud-based platforms to implement real device testing through online device farms. To further improve our understanding regarding such integrations, let us use LambdaTest as our reference point:
LambdaTest is an AI-powered test orchestration and execution platform that lets you perform manual and automation testing at scale with over 3000 real devices, browsers, and OS combinations. In case you were not aware of “What is Selenium WebDriver?” you might also not know that you can integrate LambdaTest with WebDriver to run automated cross-browser testing on your web apps.
After running the test scripts, LambdaTest script will natively generate comprehensive test reports with multiple media elements like screenshots and videos. You can use all these collaterals to easily find the faulty elements and implement the required resolution steps.
Modern web applications include various additional features like alerts and pop-ups. All of these inclusions are aimed at improving the user experience on the web. However it becomes a very troubling process while verifying the functioning of these elements. While working with Selenium, you can use various native APIs to interact with these browser alerts.
For example, the following code snippet will help you interact with alerts and pop-ups while verifying their proper functioning.
While working with Selenium, various developers prefer using multiple frames to test the functioning of various elements at the same time. In case you want to switch between the elements, you simply have to use the code snippet that you have attached below:
It is a common practice for users to upload their files on various applications depending on their requirements. However, from a developer’s point of view, it is also equally important to verify that these features are working properly. So, you can easily automate file uploads with Selenium by using the following command:
While performing visual testing on your web applications, you might want to capture screenshots to keep a record of the current status of the app’s visuals. This will help you to compare whether any change has messed up the visuals of the application. If you want to capture screenshots while implementing Selenium-based web automation testing, you simply have to enter the following in the terminal window:
Based on all the factors that we put forward in this article, we can easily justify Selenium as the crucial pillar for web automation testing. This is mostly because of its versatility and extensibility in terms of application development and testing.
However, you must remember that Selenium comes with a steep learning curve to acquire the required programming skills and also get accustomed to all the third party tools required for the proper test execution process. It is also important to remember that Selenium is only useful while you are working with web apps.
Despite these challenges, testers should be aware of the basics of Selenium and also its advanced features. So, whether you are a beginner tester or an experienced tester, Selenium will provide a scalable solution to properly automate the repetitive testing tasks in your application testing life cycle.
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