Last Updated on February 16, 2024 by Saira Farman
Because of the availability of so many tools and devices and the wide range of users, accuracy is always a significant problem for an application’s success. Despite being thoroughly tested, all applications on the market still have defects. However, the fact that there are numerous automation testing solutions on the market, and they essentially produce the same results. Why Selenium then? In this blog post, you’ll let know about some reasons to use selenium webdriver.
In order to prevent future problems, testing procedures that were previously completed manually are now conducted automatically utilizing a variety of automation tools. Automation testing has gained a lot of recognition due to its many benefits. It improves the application’s efficiency and effectiveness.
Although there are numerous automation tools on the market, Selenium is the one that typically comes up when discussing automated testing. Selenium, one of the most popular test automation frameworks in use today, is crucial in automating the testing of web browsers.
It has become a preferred tool for many developers and testers worldwide because it is one of the most well-liked and commonly utilized test automation frameworks. They favor Selenium for automated testing because it makes the lives of testers simpler owing to its usability, accessibility, and simplicity.
This is what we will go into detail about in the article, listing all the advantages of using Selenium for automation testing as well as why it is recommended over other automation testing technologies.
It is crucial to understand what Selenium is, and what it is used before we move on to the list of the advantages of automated testing with Selenium.
Table of Contents
Explaining selenium
Selenium is a well-liked automation testing framework using which the interactions between desktop and mobile web browsers can be automated. Users may quickly run their automation scripts to automate the testing of an application or a process by writing code in any Selenium-supported programming language, including Python, Java, JavaScript, C#, Perl, and Ruby.
Selenium is not a single tool but a collection of tools that have been bundled together as a suite. A toolset that will significantly simplify the job of a test engineer. It is crucial to develop reliable, browser-based regression automation suites and tests.
It stands to reason that when we mention Selenium, the Selenium WebDriver comes to mind because it is the tool that is used the most frequently overall. Selenium’s key components should be understood in order to effectively utilize the system and select the best tool for the job.
We will go through each tool in more detail below, with Selenium WebDriver receiving the most attention because it is the essential interface for operating browsers.
Components in Selenium
As was already noted, Selenium includes various tools to meet different organizations’ requirements. It has three distinct components:
- Selenium WebDriver.
- Selenium IDE.
- Selenium Grid.
Selenium WebDriver.
An open-source collection of APIs called Selenium Webdriver is used to test web applications. To determine whether a web application performs as intended or not, automated testing is done using the Selenium Webdriver tool. It mostly supports Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome, and Safari. You may also carry out cross-browser testing owing to it.
To conduct tests, each browser has a unique set of drivers. Since each browser has a unique way of carrying out tasks, such as loading a page, Chrome has ChromeDriver, Firefox has GeckoDriver, Safari has SafariDriver, and so on.
With the click of a button, WebDriver can test modern, dynamic websites whose content is always changing. In addition, WebDriver lets you utilize a programming language to write your test scripts, which isn’t available with Selenium IDE.
WebDriver supports the following programming languages: Java, Net, PHP, Python, Perl, and Ruby. You do not have to be familiar with them all. To use one, you only need to be skilled in one.
Selenium Integrated Development Environment (IDE)
The Selenium Integrated Development Environment is only available for Chrome and Firefox browsers. This extension allows users to easily record and replay user interactions in the browser. The web browser interactions of the users are recorded, and test cases are created based on these recordings. The recorded script can also be viewed and translated into other languages multiple times. Despite its simplicity, Selenium IDE cannot be used as a prototype for writing advanced test cases.
Selenium Grid
Selenium Grid is one of the Selenium testing tools that is used in the parallel execution of multiple test cases on multiple remote machines using a Hub and Node Architecture.
In the Hub-Node design, one machine serves as the Hub, controlling the test cases that run on different browsers running on different operating systems. The remaining machines are referred to as Nodes, on which test cases can be written in user-friendly programming languages.
The architecture of the Selenium Web Driver
Let’s look at the Selenium Web Driver Architecture now. The Selenium WebDriver API allows browsers and browser drivers to interact. WebDriver Architecture is made up of four essential components:
Selenium Client Libraries / Selenium Language Bindings
To support multiple languages, Selenium developers created language bindings/Selenium Client Libraries in languages such as Java, Ruby, Python, C#, and others. For example, if you want to use the browser driver in java, you should use the java bindings. All supported language bindings can be downloaded from Selenium’s official website. When the test cases are executed, the entire Selenium code is converted to JSON format.
Wire Protocol for JSON
JSON is an abbreviation for Javascript Object Notation. It is an open standard for exchanging data over the internet. It is responsible for transferring data from the server to the client. It understands data structures like objects and arrays. As a result, writing and reading JSON data is straightforward. The JSON Wire Protocol is primarily in charge of data transfer between HTTP servers.
Browser Drivers
Selenium employs browser-specific drivers to establish a safe connection with the browser without revealing the internal logic of the browser’s functionality. Each browser has its own browser driver. Browser drivers communicate with their respective browsers and execute commands by interpreting JSON received from the browser. When the browser driver receives instructions, they execute them on the browser. The response is then returned as an HTTP response.
Browsers
Selenium WebDriver supports the following browsers:
Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, and Safari.
Now that we’ve covered the basics of Selenium and the tools available, let’s look at the main reasons why Selenium WebDriver is a good tool for automation testing:
Reasons to use Selenium WebDriver
Open-Source
It has a publicly accessible automation framework and can be freely downloaded without any upfront direct costs
Selenium continuously assists developers and engineers in automatically generating test scripts to test the functionality and features of web browsers. It aids in code management by improving the performance of predefined classes and functions.
Language support
Selenium WebDriver supports a variety of programming languages, including selenium Java, Perl, Python, C#, Ruby, Groovy, JavaScript, and others, providing the developer with a great deal of freedom and flexibility.
Any of the above programming languages can be used to write selenium scripts, which are then converted into selenium-compatible codes for selenium automation. When you use Selenium as an automation testing tool, you don’t have to worry about frameworks or languages because Selenium handles everything for you.
Compatibility with various operating systems
Different developers use different operating systems, so it is always necessary to select automation tools that support all of them. Selenium is a lightweight tool that works with a variety of operating systems, including Linux, Windows, macOS, and UNIX.
Users can create selenium test scripts on any platform and execute them on others. For example, they can create test cases in Windows and easily run them on a Linux-based system. This makes it easier for testers and developers to write test automation scripts for any platform.
Support for multiple browsers
The Selenium community updates its software on a regular basis. The most popular browsers across the world are Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Internet Explorer, Opera, and Edge, and the selenium script is compatible with all of them. There is no need to create scripts for each browser; one script will cover all of them.
Support for various frameworks
Selenium also works with a variety of frameworks. It can, for example, integrate with the Maven framework for source code compilation. It can also be integrated with the TestNG framework for application testing and reporting. It can integrate with Jenkins or Hudson for Continuous Integration (CI) and other open-source tools to support
additional features.
Advanced User Input
WebDriver allows users to request that the browser’s back and forward buttons be clicked. A helpful feature, for example, when testing money transfer applications. This feature is rare in many tools, particularly open source.
Easy Implementation
The use of Selenium automation tools is very simple. Selenium provides a user-friendly approach, allowing users to easily and effectively create and execute test scripts. Users could see the tests being executed while running the test.
Furthermore, its reporting capabilities enable the extraction of Selenium reports and future events. The open-source features of Selenium WebDriver allow users to script their own extensions, making them easy to develop, customize actions, and even manipulate at an advanced level.
Reusability and Extensions
Scripts written for WebDriver are reusable and can be tested directly across multiple browsers. As a result, testers can run multiple testing scenarios using the same base. It integrates with add-on tools that broaden the scope of testing to cover almost all aspects of functional testing. For example, it must be integrated with Junit and TestNG for running test cases and generating reports, and it must be integrated with CI/CD tools such as Docker, Maven, and Jenkins for continuous testing.
It must be combined with the Sikuli tool to execute the visual image process, and it must be used with a platform like Lambda test with a cloud grid to execute cross-browser testing. This reveals that selenium can be used in combination with almost any type of management tool.
Execution of tests in parallel
The goal of automated testing is to save time and effort. With the help of a Selenium grid, users could run multiple tests in parallel, reducing execution time. Using cross grids for cross-browser testing, users can test hundreds of browsers in parallel using Selenium.
Mimic User Behavior
As previously stated, Selenium WebDriver can mimic user input; in real-world scenarios, users can automate events such as key presses, mouse clicks, drag and drop, click and hold, selecting, and much more.
Automated Selenium testing on LambdaTest
The most powerful medium in the Selenium toolkit is the Selenium WebDriver. However many functionalities needed for comprehensive test automation are missing from these open-source tools.
For example, it does not include complete web automation testing tools. A third-party framework and add-ons are required to broaden the testing process. As a result, many testing teams using Selenium for web app testing rely on cloud platforms such as LambdaTest to accelerate web app automation testing.
LambdaTest is a secure, reliable, cross-browser compatibility testing platform that blends seamlessly with the Selenium framework, offering an easy-to-use platform that allows users to quickly release high-quality apps.
LambdaTest offers an end-to-end cloud testing solution that addresses all of the testing needs of testers, including cross-browser testing, data-driven testing, and manual exploratory testing, with the ability to automate Web, Android, iOS, and API testing on a single platform.
Selenium’s integration with LambdaTest enables testers to run Selenium test automation scripts on a cloud Selenium Grid of over 3000 real devices, browsers, and operating systems to perform browser compatibility testing for the application. This is to ensure that the application is rendered flawlessly across all major browsers, real devices, and operating systems.
Using a cloud-based Selenium Grid also lets the testers find bugs faster and make testing much more scalable and maintenance-free.
Conclusion
After reviewing the reasons why Selenium WebDriver is a good tool for automation testing, it is possible to conclude that WebDriver is one such tool that has made its mark in QA testing over the last few years and is worth exploring.
Apart from this, if you are interested to know about “Integrating Selenium” then visit our Technology category.
