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Automated testing has become the base to ensure the quality and reliability of web applications, allowing teams to deliver robust applications. Selenium is an adaptable and scalable framework that guarantees the quality and reliability of web applications and has become the entrusted solution for web browser automation.
Mastering Selenium testing becomes necessary for testers and developers as the requirement for quicker and more dependable applications increases. Selenium testing offers many advantages, making it a favored choice among developers and testers globally for automating web application testing.
In this article, we will discuss Selenium testing from basic scripts to advanced ones. It includes understanding Selenium, its components, the benefits of using Selenium, and Selenium test scripts. We will also discuss the Selenium framework, why to use it, and types of Selenium framework.
What is Selenium?
Selenium is an open-source automated testing framework to test web applications across diverse browsers including Firefox, Chrome, Edge, Safari, and Opera. Through its wide range of compatibility, it ensures detailed browser coverage. It is compatible with automation testing frameworks like JUnit, MSTest, TestNG, etc.
Its versatility in testing across various environments is attributed to its cross-browser, cross-language, and cross-platform capabilities. Selenium 4 is the advanced version of Selenium. It comes with several exciting features that enhance the abilities of this widely known web automation framework. It has valuable improvements, including relative locators, an enhanced Selenium Grid architecture, and an improved Selenium IDE. It eliminates the necessity of encoding and decoding API requests through the JSON wire protocol.
Components of Selenium
The main components of Selenium are mentioned below:
- Selenium WebDriver- Selenium WebDriver offers a programming interface. This interface helps to interact with web browsers and permits users to automate the testing of web applications.
- Selenium IDE- Selenium IDE is a browser extension that records and plays user interaction with websites. This helps to create and maintain tests and site automation. Selenium IDE is available for Chrome and Firefox.
- Selenium Grid- Selenium Grid is utilized for parallel test execution across numerous machines and browsers. It allows users to run tests in parallel and thus saves time and resources.
These components work jointly to enable the automation of web browsers and the testing of web applications. After getting an idea about Selenium let us know its benefits.
Benefits of Selenium
Selenium presents a variety of benefits, making it one of the most widely used testing frameworks. Some of them are mentioned below:
Cross-browser compatibility- Test website in different browsers and platforms ensures consistent behavior and functionality across different environments.
Multiple programming language supports- Its support for programming languages like Ruby, Python, Java, JavaScript, etc. allows developers to choose the language that fits their requirements.
Open source and community support- Being an open-source framework it is freely available and supported by different developers and testers worldwide. This community contributes to its continuous improvement, updates, and extensive documentation.
Easier to understand and implement- Selenium has simple commands that are easy to implement and are categorized according to different classes. This feature of Selenium makes it easy to understand.
Cross-Browser Testing Across Devices- Selenium allows users to conduct cross-browser tests across diverse browsers, platforms, and devices. The application can be tested on emulators, simulators, and real devices to ensure it performs uniformly across devices. Various platforms like LambdaTest, TestComplete, Ghost Inspector, etc. also support Cross-browser testing.
Lambdatest, an AI-powered test orchestration and execution platform is used for testing web and mobile applications manually and in an automated way at scale. This platform allows testers to perform mobile and website testing in real time by providing access to a cloud Selenium Grid of more than 3000 environments, real mobile devices, and browsers online.
LambdaTest provides instant results and feedback from the tests. It allows testing on the most recent versions of browsers and operating systems by constantly being up-to-date with the latest versions available, allowing testers to test websites in different browser and operating system combinations.
Some of the notable features of LambdaTest include geological testing to automate tests to simulate browsing from different geographic locations, visual regression testing to detect identical visual changes in web applications, and testing the web application’s performance under various network conditions.
It is easy to use, adaptable to various testing needs, facilitates team collaboration with communication and sharing tools, and allows for parallel testing, data-driven testing, and functional testing.
Reusable test scripts- Promoting code reusability through reusable test scripts and functions helps reduce duplication of effort and maintenance overhead. Test scripts can be organized into libraries that can be reused across test cases or projects.
Parallel Test execution- Selenium Grid allows parallel execution of tests across multiple or virtual machines, notably reducing test execution time and improving overall test efficiency.
Support various frameworks- It employs prominent frameworks available with Java, JavaScript, Python, and other programming languages supported by Selenium. Some major test automation frameworks that can be integrated with Selenium are TestNG, JUnit, xUnit, MSTest, PyUnit, etc. When used with a Selenium grid, it helps testers run Selenium parallel tests across different browsers and platform combinations.
Integration with CI/CD tools- Continuous integration and shift-left testing are the practices followed by many organizations. Selenium supports integration with many CI/CD tools like Jenkins, Circle CI, Travis CI, TeamCity, and more.
Integration with CI/CD tools helps ensure that every line of code retained in the repository goes through numerous cycles of Selenium automation tests. This helps unearth bugs and ensures the best quality product reaches the end user.
What are Selenium test scripts?
Selenium test scripts are automated scripts written utilizing the Selenium framework to test web applications. These are essential to simulate user actions on a web browser and allow testers to create test cases in their selected language. These scripts help verify that web applications function perfectly and consistently across browsers and platforms.
Characteristics of Selenium test scripts
Some characteristics of Selenium test scripts are mentioned below:
- Automation- Selenium test scripts automate repetitive and time-consuming testing tasks like regression testing.
- Reusability- Scripts can be reused for different test scenarios with minor adjustments.
- Scalability- As the application grows, additional scripts can be formed to encircle untried features, and existing scripts can be altered to account for changes.
- Cross-Browser Compatibility- Selenium scripts can be configured to run across various browsers like Chrome, Firefox, etc. to ensure invariant behavior.
- Maintainability- With a well-organized framework, scripts can be maintained and updated easily as the application evolves.
Uses of Selenium test scripts
Some uses of Selenium test scripts are listed below:
- Functional Testing- Selenium test scripts can be used for functional testing that is to verify that web application functions work as expected.
- Regression Testing- It is also used for regression testing to ensure new code changes do not break existing features.
- Cross-Browser Testing- To validate that the application acts invariably across various browsers.
- Data-Driven Testing- The test scripts can be utilized for data-driven testing. Data-driven testing runs the same tests with different sets of input data.
Types of Selenium Framework
Mentioned below are the three kinds of Selenium framework:
Data-driven framework- The data-driven framework is based on the varied data sets built into an external file and imported into the automation testing tool. It is a highly functional and widely utilized automation testing framework that allows iterative development and testing.
It follows the principles of data-driven testing, letting testers drive test cases and test suites using external data feeds such as Excel Sheets CSV files, and more. By setting a connection with the external data source, the test script seamlessly achieves the required operations on the test data, ensuring efficient and accurate testing.
Keyword-Driven Framework- A keyword-driven framework is based on keywords and is a pack of guidelines followed while automating test cases. Keywords are written to abstract the sophistication of the code. The usage and maintenance of a keyword-driven framework is effortless.
A set of keywords in a precise and intended order has to be included as a part of test case preparation to perform a particular task or task on the application. All these keywords are defined in the common repository or a reusable library.
Hybrid-driven framework- Hybrid-driven framework is a combination of data-driven frameworks and keyword-driven frameworks. It uses different keywords and data sets. The inputs and functions list are stored in separate files. The data-driven framework uses the same code or other data sets.
When to use the Selenium framework
The Selenium framework can be used for a variety of testing needs including:
- Large and complex web applications- When testing an application with numerous pages, features, and user flows, a Selenium framework helps testers manage the complexity by organizing tests in a structured manner.
- Regression testing- Selenium frameworks are ideal for automating regression tests. These tests need to be run every time there is a code change as it helps to ensure that existing functionality isn’t broken.
- Data-driven testing- To validate applications with different inputs, a data-driven Selenium framework can handle large sets of test data, executing the same test cases with various data inputs.
- Continuous integration/Continuous deployment(CI/CD) pipelines- If the development process involves CI/CD, integrating a Selenium framework allows for automated testing every time a new code is deployed. It ensures immediate feedback and quicker bug fixes.
- Compliance and audibility- In environments where testing must be documented for compliance reasons, using a Selenium framework helps ensure that tests are consistently executed.
- Handling increased test volume- As the number of test cases grows, a well-structured Selenium framework makes it easier to scale test suites, manage test dependencies, and run tests in parallel.
Conclusion
Mastering Selenium testing requires a complete journey from understanding basic scripts to developing advanced frameworks. Using Selenium testers can learn to handle web elements, execute cross-browser tests, and integrate with various frameworks. With features like parallel execution testers can enhance the speed of the application development cycle and improve their test automation to the next level.