Globally there are billions of people who are actively engaged in research, connection, education, and entertainment through the Internet. With this rapidly increasing number of internet users, providing a top-notch web experience is not an easy task. Building a website is challenging and is also in great demand. Bugs and issues are obvious in web development and therefore finding and rectifying those bugs requires thorough testing.
Previously a lot of web testing was done manually which is a slow and repetitive process, takes more time, and is prone to human error. However, with the advancement in technology, there is a continuing trend toward automation testing. When compared to manual testing, automation testing allows testers to execute more test cases automatically through test automation frameworks like Selenium and improve the test coverage. Automation testing with Selenium serves as one of the best tools that help developers ease complex testing tasks and achieve greater efficiency.
In this article we will discuss Selenium, covering everything one needs to know to get started with the Selenium framework to make Selenium testing easier for beginners. We will start with a brief introduction to Selenium. After that, we will move to its components, features, frameworks, and lastly why it is preferred for web automation.
Selenium
One of the most widely used open-source web automation testing frameworks- Selenium offers a comprehensive suite of tools and libraries for automating web browser interactions. It includes features that mimic the user’s interaction with the browsers and a server to manage browser usage across different browsers, and platforms.
Selenium follows the W3C measure that helps testers write code in scripting languages such as Java, JavaScript, C#, PHP, Python, and Ruby so that the test script can be used across all the major web browsers.
It is a universal framework, offering the capability to test websites and web applications across different environments for cross-browser, cross-language, and cross-platform compatibility.
Moreover, major web browsers that Selenium supports are Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Edge, and Opera to ensure comprehensive browser coverage. Selenium is platform-independent, which means it can be deployed on Windows, and Linux, and its flexibility is further enhanced by its capability to seamlessly integrate with different automation testing frameworks like JUnit, TestNG, Pytest, WebdriverIO, and more for test management.
Components of Selenium
Selenium is not a single tool but a suite of tools that comprises three main components, each catering to the different testing needs. They are-
Selenium Integrated Development Environment(IDE)- Selenium IDE is one of the Selenium suite of tools that provide developers with reliable methods to develop test cases faster. It is a Chrome and Firefox extension that is easy to use and helps to record and playback user’s interactions on the browser using the existing Selenium commands.
The recorded test scripts can then be exported into a reusable script in multiple programming languages like Java, HTML, Python, C#, Ruby, RSpec, JUnit, and TestNG. Despite that IDE has limited scope, and the generated test scripts are not robust and portable.
Selenium Grid- Selenium Grid is a part of the Selenium testing tool that allows running multiple tests on various machines against different browsers and operating systems simultaneously.
Selenium Grid uses a hub-and-node architecture, where one server makes a move as a hub and the tests communicate to the hub to get access to browser instances and control the network of test machines (nodes).
This setup facilitates parallel testing and also helps to manage different browser versions and browser configurations wholly instead of in each test. This significantly reduces the time for cross-browser and cross-platform testing, enhancing testing efficiency and coverage
Various online platforms provide an online Selenium Grid to access and run Selenium automation scripts and automate cross-browser testing, LambdaTest is one such cloud platform.
Selenium WebDriver
Selenium WebDriver is one of the most widely used components of the Selenium suite. It is the first cross-platform testing framework that can configure and control the browser at the OS level and perform actions on web elements.
Selenium WebDriver accepts commands through a browser-specific driver or a Client API and retrieves the results.
Why Selenium for Web Automation Testing
The automation process helps to execute more tests with greater efficiency leveraging test automation frameworks and other helpful tools. Testers benefit from automation tests by running the same test cases multiple times or across different browsers automatically which requires less time to complete the tasks as compared to manual testing which takes more time and is less efficient than automation.
Selenium is one such automation tool that seamlessly integrates with existing development workflows and helps to achieve all the expectations. Implementing Selenium automated testing enhances test coverage, improves the accuracy of the tests, and increases execution speed, delivering efficient applications in a shorter time.
With the increase in online work and the vast number of websites, Selenium allows automating tests across various web browsers and multiple operating systems. Selenium scripts can be written in various scripting languages like Java, Python, NodeJS, PHP, Ruby, Perl, C#, and more with a single interface. Additionally, Selenium can also be integrated with different frameworks for test management.
Automating web app tests with Selenium enables developers and testers to write test scripts in various programming languages, and run them across different operating systems and browser configurations to ensure accuracy and efficiency in the testing processes, and that every user has the same experience, regardless of what operating system or browser version they use.
Tests that can be automated using Selenium
Using Selenium, developers and testers can automate various testing types. Some of them are-
Regression Testing- Regression testing requires significant human resources and is time-consuming. It involves re-running existing tests to ensure that frequent changes are made to the website or web application that have not impacted the existing functionalities. With Selenium these tests can be automated, providing quicker feedback on the recent code updates and helping to maintain the stability of the website over time.
Performance testing- Selenium can be used to perform stress and load testing on the application. Automating repeated tests helps to achieve the desired coverage, which is otherwise a tedious and time-consuming process when done manually.
Data-Driven Testing- To achieve data-driven testing Selenium is integrated with data handling tools to process multiple sets of input data tests and validate website behavior under various data conditions.
Functional Testing- Selenium is an ideal framework for testing the functional aspects of a website. It is used to validate whether frameworks and development codebases meet the specified requirements.
Cross-Browser Testing- Selenium can be used to perform cross-browser testing. This is done by executing tests across multiple browsers to verify that the website’s behavior and appearance are consistent across various browsers, operating systems, devices, and resolutions.
Including these, Selenium can be used to perform other types of testing as well, they include unit testing, visual testing, monkey testing, smoke testing, and integration testing.
Benefits of automating web tests with Selenium
Web automation testing using Selenium enables developers to write test code that runs through all possible measures in a web app more quickly. Some of the other benefits of automating web tests with Selenium are-
Open-source
Being a free and open-source suite of tools Selenium is a cost-effective solution for web automation testing
Multi-language support
Selenium scripts can be written in a wide range of programming languages, including Java, Python, PHP, C#, Ruby, and JavaScript. This flexibility allows testers to work with their preferred programming languages.
Cross-platform compatibility
Selenium tests can be performed on multiple operating systems, including Windows, macOS, Linux, and iOS, enabling testers to ensure consistent results across environments.
Works across browsers- Selenium supports every major web browser online, namely, Firefox, Chrome, Safari, IE, and more. This comprehensive coverage helps developers ensure web applications’ seamless functionality across different browsers.
Framework integration- Selenium offers integration capability with various automation testing frameworks such as TestNG, JUnit, TestCafe, and others. With this integration testers can leverage different capabilities of the framework, helping in streamlining the automation testing process.
Enables parallel test execution- Parallel testing with Selenium allows developers to run multiple test suites across multiple browsers and operating system configurations simultaneously both locally and on a cloud-based grid. This helps to reduce the overall testing time, scaling growing test suites.
Mouse and keyboard simulation- Selenium can simulate real user interactions by replicating mouse behaviors and keyboard events. This helps test complex user interactions and scenarios like automated web page interaction with dynamically loaded content, Single Page Applications (SPAs), and drag-and-drop interactions.
Headless browser testing- Headless browser testing using Selenium is well-suited for different types of testing including end-to-end testing, regression testing, performance testing, visual regression testing, and data extraction. Helping developers achieve faster test execution, optimize resource utilization, and enhance testing scalability.
Comprehensive reporting and documentation- With Selenium’s detailed test execution logs and reports, the test team can easily track test results and pinpoint areas that require attention. Its robust documentation ensures transparency and accountability throughout the testing process, facilitating better communication and collaboration among team members.
Community support- Selenium has a large and active community with extensive support and resources that help Selenium stay current and adapt to evolving web technologies.
Limitations of Selenium testing
- Selenium focuses only on testing web-based applications. Testing desktop or mobile applications requires integration with third-party tools or frameworks like Appium and TestNG.
- Being an open-source tool, Selenium is limited to providing reliable tech support to resolve user queries.
- Selenium has limited support for testing images; to achieve that Sikuli can be used.
- Selenium has no built-in reporting and test management facility; hence detailed test reporting cannot be generated. It needs to be integrated with tools like TestNG, JUnit, and others to facilitate test reporting and management.
- Selenium requires prior basic knowledge of programming languages.
Running Selenium tests on a cloud platform
Despite the above shortcomings, Selenium remains a popular open-source testing framework due to its flexibility and versatility in the field of web automated testing. To fully utilize the full potential of the Selenium framework, and overcome these limitations it is best to integrate it with a test automation platform like LambdaTest that enhances Selenium automation by providing users with exceptional web experiences across various browsers, platforms, and network conditions.
LambdaTest is an AI-powered test orchestration and execution platform that provides testers access to a cloud Selenium Grid of more than 3000 environments, real devices, and browsers to run Selenium tests at scale.
Using Selenium Grid testers can run tests in parallel testing more efficiently and accurately on multiple browsers and operating systems. This significantly reduces test execution time and enhances overall efficiency, enabling the identification of performance or compatibility issues that may not be visible when running the tests on a single browser or device.
Using this platform tester can also perform manual and automated testing of web and mobile applications in real time. In addition, testers can make use of all the features available with this platform, like robust debugging and monitoring capabilities, screenshots, and video recording tools for debugging purposes. These tools are useful in easily capturing detailed information performance metrics, network logs, errors or bugs during test execution.
Conclusion
In conclusion, it can be said that Selenium is a powerful and flexible testing tool that improves web application testing. Selenium automation testing helps easily find bugs in the web application and perform efficient and accurate testing on multiple browsers and operating systems. So, take advantage of this framework. There is a load of information available online to help beginners learn more about this tool.