selenium for automation testing
Content Contributors: Susmitha.S & Jayasurya.A (QAonCloud)
Jason Hugins created Selenium in 2004 at ThoughtWorks. Since then Selenium has grown into one of the best open-source tools for automation testing of different web-browsers.
For testing web applications, Selenium is a portable framework.
Selenium Suite is a collection of 4 different components:
- Selenium Integrated Development Environment(IDE)
- Remote Control(RC)
- Selenium WebDriver
- Selenium Grid
suite components
1. Selenium IDE
Selenium IDE(Integrated Development Environment) is a straightforward tool in the Selenium suite. Therefore, It is easy to install and learn. Moreover, you can use Selenium IDE without any programming knowledge. You can record and playback the test actions easily with this browser plug-in. Just add the extension to your required browser. And then you are ready to start your recording through the GUI(Graphical User Interface) provided by Selenium IDE.
2. Selenium Remote Control(RC)
The Remote Control(Selenium RC) is a tool used to design the UI test. It is a testing framework that helps the user to develop the test cases in any programming language. Besides, Selenium RC works based on its components. The components of the Selenium RC are Selenium server and Client libraries. RC Server is like a mediator between browser and selenium commands. Furthermore, Selenium RC supports different programming languages like C, Java, Pearl, PHP, Python, and Ruby. Due to RC’s complicated architecture and limitations, another automation Framework Selenium Webdriver was developed. RC is still available, but the support can’t be availed.
3. Selenium WebDriver
As discussed above, web driver is a replacement for RC with a simple architecture. This architecture just needs an IDE to write the code and a browser to perform the test. Selenium Web-Driver permits you to execute cross-browser testing. It does not require any server to interact with the browser unlike RC. Besides, it directly calls the web browser which makes it faster compared to RC. The only drawback here is that it can not generate automatic HTML reports like selenium RC. It supports all programming languages that RC supports. And also each browser has its own web driver like Chrome Driver, Safari Driver, etc.,
4. Selenium Grid
Selenium Grid is a testing tool that is used in combination with RC. It specializes in running multiple tests across different Operating Systems and Browsers. Grid 1 and Grid 2 are the two versions of Selenium Grid. But nowadays, we only focus on Grid 2 because, as it supports RC as well as Webdriver scripts. Grid 1 can automate only one browser Per RC and Grid 2 can automate up to 5 browsers per Remote Control.
REASONS TO CHOOSE SELENIUM FOR AUTOMATION TESTING
1. FRAMEWORK AND LANGUAGE SUPPORT
When a customer chooses a tool for automation testing, they need to make sure whether the tool supports all major languages in software automation testing or not? Selenium supports all major languages like Java, Python, JavaScript, C#, Ruby, and Perl programming languages for software automation. When we write your script in any one language, it will convert it into Selenium compatible codes. Every Selenium supported language has dedicated frameworks. It helps to write test scripts for selenium automation tests.
2. EASY TO USE
Selenium script is not like a sophisticated algorithm. To begin with selenium automation testing, the customer has to be satisfied with the documentation on the selenium website. In the Firefox browser, the Selenium IDE extension can record and play the functionality to generate the Selenium script for reference. Also, Selenium supports parallel test execution.
3. CROSS-BROWSER AND CROSS-DEVICE TESTING SUPPORT
Like Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Internet Explorer, Opera, and Edge are the commonly used browsers, and selenium script is compatible with all these browsers. For every browser, we need not rewrite the script, just the same script for all browsers. And Selenium web driver can work across multiple devices and can write automated test cases for testing on Blackberry, Android,iPhones.
4. WORK WITH THE VARIOUS OPERATING SYSTEMS
Selenium is a very portable tool that supports and works with different operating systems especially like the Windows, UNIX, LINUX, etc. Hence, if you create test suites in any platform like Windows, you can execute the same test suites on other platforms like UNIX or LINUX.
5. LESS HARDWARE USAGE
When you compare with other vendor automation tools like QTP, UFT, etc., you will find that the Selenium requires less hardware. Besides, Selenium is free and has a zero license cost.
6. EASY TO IMPLEMENTATION
Selenium provides a user-friendly interface that helps to create and also execute test scripts effectively and efficiently. There are a considerable number of communities available to help in case of any need.
7. FLEXIBILITIES
Test management is vital in the testing life cycle. It becomes more comfortable and also more efficient with selenium features like regrouping and refactoring of the test case. Undoubtedly, Selenium is more flexible and usable compared to other automation testing tools.
8. OPEN SOURCE AVAILABILITY
Selenium is the open-source availability and also helps to customize the code for better code management. It is a publically accessible automation framework and at no cost, and thus we can use them for good causes. Selenium is the most usable web automation tool because it quickly generates test scripts to validate functionality.
9. REUSABLE AND INTEGRATION
Usually, Selenium automation test suites are reusable. Therefore, it can be tested across multiple browsers and operating systems.
10. ADVANCED BROWSER INTERACTION
Selenium Web drivers also make it possible to simulate the advanced interaction like clicking the browser back and front button. And also, there are No such open-source tools that can’t provide automated testing for this kind of scenario.
Very good blog!
Yeah, Selenium Its ability to support multiple languages, browsers, Os’s is one of the major reasons for the wide acceptance and use. It is indeed strong when compared to the available tools for automation testing and is very simple and flexible.