Selenium Simplified: Your Guide to Web Testing Automation

In the world of software development, automation is fundamental to embrace efficiency, accuracy and reliability. Selenium is a vital automation tool that has become popular among many enterprises and software testers from around the world. In this article, we have tried to provide a detailed guide by looking into the key aspects of Selenium testing.

What is Selenium?

Selenium is essentially an open-source testing tool that lets software testers automate web applications on several operating systems and browsers. As the name suggests, Selenium test automation refers to the test conducted using Selenium. You should understand that Selenium is not a single tool used for software testing, but it encompasses a collection of tools, each addressing several Selenium test automation requirements.

Manual Testing is one of the significant parts of software application development processes. However, it has several drawbacks, such as being repetitive. In order to tackle this limitation, an engineer named Jason Huggins made his efforts to automate the software testing process and named it Selenium.

Components of Selenium

The four key components of Selenium include:

Selenium IDE

Selenium RC

Selenium Grid

Selenium WebDriver

Let’s discover below what each of the four components in Selenium implies:

Selenium IDE

Selenium IDE records user interactions on web pages, for example, selections, clicks and so on. It offers a record and playback feature for developing automated test scripts. It generates test scripts in programming languages such as Java, Python, C# and Selenese (its own scripting language). Selenium IDE enables the creation of automated test scripts and validates them fast. Further, it helps find highlighting errors by replaying user interactions and facilitates cross-browser testing.

Selenium RC

Selenium RC was developed to implement web application test automation by simulating user communication on several browsers. It paved the way for remote browser automation and implemented test scripts in different programming languages. However, Selenium RC has many drawbacks, such as browser limitations, impact on performance and speed, compatibility, synchronization and maintenance issues. Apart from these, configuring Selenium RC was a bit complex and had as it featured multiple components.

Selenium Grid

Selenium Grid is a proxy server that lets the quality assurance team execute parallel tests on several devices and browsers. Therefore, it minimizes execution time and enhances efficiency in the first place. This is made possible through the routing of commands to remote web browsers. Under such instances, one of the servers will be the hub. This hub routes the commands in the JSON format to various registered Grid nodes.

Selenium WebDriver

An advanced version of Selenium RC, Selenium WebDriver, is developed to beat the drawbacks of Selenium RC. It interacts with the web browsers directly by using browser-specific native tools. As a result, it eliminates the need for using Selenium RC. WebDriver works with Selenium IDE and Selenium Grid, which further speeds up the text execution tasks. It is the key component among the four components of Selenium. More importantly, it supports various programming languages such as Python, Java C# and many more.

Automation Testing in Selenium

With the help of Selenium automation testing software, it is easy to perform automation testing in several programming languages. It facilitates you to test the functionality of your application on multiple web browsers and platforms. It’s one of the best ways to automate application testing.

?As a first step, to start with the Selenium test automation tool, you should install the Selenium WebDriver. The browser automation tool helps you run Selenium automation testing on multiple browsers. When you complete the installation, begin writing Selenium tests.

The primary objective of Selenium test automation is to identify and detect web applications. You need to use Selenium Grid to run tests of several browsers. A Selenium Grid is a server that helps run multiple tests simultaneously on different operating systems and browsers.

Steps in Selenium Automation Testing

Configure Your Selenium Testing

Prior to implementing Selenium test automation, prepare and plan your development environment.

At the outset, you must select the right programming language for automation tasks, such as Python, Java, or C#. You must set up the Integrated Development Environment (IDE), which is vital for writing automation scripts. Once you set up your environment, you must write your first Selenium test script.

Locating and Interacting with Web Elements

The most basic part of Selenium test automation is interacting with web elements. The various web element locators include ID, Name, XPath, and CSS Selector. The performing actions on web elements include clicking buttons, typing into input fields, and submitting forms. Use the WebDriver’s commands to interact with web elements. Test cases should cover a wide range of scenarios to offer complete test coverage.?

Implementation and Reporting

Once the test cases are completed, the next step is to execute them. Selenium lets you run tests on several operating systems and browsers. Thus, it ensures cross-browser and multi-platform compatibility. It is possible for you to execute tests locally or integrate them with continuous deployment. It is easier to locate and diagnose errors as Selenium records the outcomes at the time of execution of tests. The test reports generated offer insights, which include pass/fail and the details of errors. Based on this report, software testers can make informed decisions. More importantly, they can track software quality as well.?

Wrapping up

Today, automation testing rules the roost as software developers can save time. If you are looking for a robust tool for application testing, the Selenium testing tool will help. It can help you identify bugs in the application and favours testing on several operating systems and web browsers. Using the expertise of test automation services companies such as ThinkPalm, you can ward off the issues you face while developing web applications. Also, ThinkPalm ensures the best software quality to satisfy your customers!