A Guide to Selenium Automation Testing Tool
Jason Huggins, a Software engineer had developed a new, pioneering test automation tool. It was named by referencing the chemical element and the supplement recommended as a remedy for mercury poisoning – selenium. Read more to get an overview of the Selenium Automation Testing Tool.
What is Selenium?
Selenium automation testing tool is a free solution for web applications across various platforms and browsers. It automates web-based applications. This is not a single tool but a set of software solutions that cater to various testing needs of an organization. It has four components.
The tests can be compiled as HTML tables or coded in several popular programming languages that can e executed directly in the web browsers. Selenium tool can be configured on Linux, Windows, and Mac.
Only web application testing is possible with Selenium. No desktop (software) or mobile application can testing can be done using Selenium. Since it is open-source, no licensing cost involved. Other reasons behind Selenium’s ever-growing popularity are:
The Main Components of Selenium Testing Tools are:
- Selenium Integrated Development Environment (IDE)
- Selenium Remote Control (RC)
- Selenium Grid
- WebDriver, allows the test scripts to communicate with the browser directly thereby managing it from the OS level.
What is Selenium IDE?
This is the integrated development ecosystem for developing Selenium test cases. This operates as a Mozilla Firefox add-on and affords a user-friendly interface for developing and executing individual test cases or suites.
Though Selenium IDE is a Firefox add on, the tests created in it can be executed in other browsers using Selenium RC (Selenium Remote Control) and determining the name of the test suite in the command line.
Benefits and Features of Selenium IDE
- Quick field selection will use names, IDs, or XPath as required
- The script format can be compiled in various languages like Java, C#, Python, PERL, PHP, HTML
- Auto-complete for the common commands in Selenium
- Debug and place breakpoints
- Automatically claim the title of every page
- Supports Selenium user-extensions.js file
What is Selenium RC (Remote Control)?
Selenium Remote Control (RC) is a server compiled in Java that accepts browser commands through HTTP. RC makes it feasible to compile automated tests in any programming language for a web application that allows the smooth integration of Selenium in the existing frameworks. Selenium currently offers client drivers for Ruby, Python,.NET, Perl, PHP, and Java. The Java driver can also be executed with JavaScript.
Benefits and Features of Selenium RC
- To develop a test with a more expressive language than Selenese
- To execute your test against various browsers (except HtmlUnit) on diverse operating systems
- To check your application against a new Java Script browser
- To check web applications using complex AJAX-based scenarios
What is Selenium Grid?
Selenium Grid allows the Selenium RC solution to scale for test suites that must be executed in various ecosystems. Selenium Grid can help to execute multiple instances of Selenium RC on various types of operating systems and browser configurations. You can execute parallel tests on multiple machines and browsers simultaneously. Saving time is the main function of this tool. You can also make use of it to test one application in various parallel browsers. Various configurations with Grid, the combination of versions of browsers and operating systems can be created. When used in large ecosystems, Grid is a major time-saver.
How Selenium Web driver Function?
- For each of the executed selenium commands, an HTTP request is developed and sent to the browser driver
- The HTTP server identifies the steps essential for executing the selenium command and run them on the browser
- The executed commands’ status is then sent back to the HTTP Server
- HTTP server thereafter sends the execution status to the HTTP server
Benefits of Selenium Automation Tool
- Test scripts can be compiled in any of these programming languages like Python, Java, C#, Ruby, PHP, Perl & .Net
- Tests can be executed in any of these OS: Windows, Linux, Mac
- Tests can be executed using any browser: Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, Opera, and Safari
- It can be incorporated with tools like JUnit and TestNG for generating reports and managing test cases
- It can be combined with Maven, Docker, QMetry, SauceLabs, and Jenkins to accomplish Continuous Testing
- Integrated with DevOps, Agile, Continuous Delivery workflow
- Since it’s transferable across all platforms and it is not mandatory to learn new languages, Selenium facilitates flexibility
- Allows mobile testing: Hybrid, Native, or web mobile apps can be tested
- Plugins: Selenium can be extended with a wide range of plugins that include Appium and Selendroid. These plugins exist for WebDriver, Grid, and Selenium IDE
A selenium automation testing tool is good enough for testers and overlooks the codeless trend. It guarantees faster delivery, can be handled easily, and receives instant feedback. The fact that Selenium is a universal use case cannot be denied. It doesn’t surpass other test automation tools.
