Updated March 14, 2023
What is Selenium Testing?
Selenium is an open-source (free) suite that is used for making the tests automated, which are being carried out on the web browser – used for testing a web application. As the Selenium tool is open-source, it requires no costs related to its licensing, which gives it an extra edge over other tools used for similar purposes. This testing which is backed by this Selenium tool, is called as Selenium Testing.
This open-source automated testing suite is quite like the HPE Unified Functional Testing software (UFT), but its knack of focusing on automating web-based applications makes it distinctive. Selenium Testing enables automating tests for web applications across diversified platforms as well as browsers. This type of testing is well-versed with a curated set of software, which can be used to quench various needs of an organization with respect to testing. It can boost the business growth of an organization and give it a secured online environment in the long run.
Selenium Testing consists of four key components as follows:
- Integrated Development Environment (IDE): It is a Firefox extension mechanism, which is used to effectively automate the browser with its in-built feature of record-and-playback.
- Remote Control (RC): It is a server that helps in ‘tricking’ the browser to believe that the web application and Selenium Core, which are being tested, actually belong to a similar domain by acting as an HTTP proxy.
- WebDriver: It was first of all the cross-platform testing frameworks, which was an easy-to-use component helping control the browser from the OS level.
- Selenium Grid: This mechanism has a remarkable capability of capturing screenshots of the browser at significant stages. It also has the ability to simultaneously rolling out Selenium commands to various machines.
Selenium Testing
A curated set of various software tools, each striving with a distinct approach of assisting test automation, is known as Selenium Testing. This comprehensive suite of tools showcases the capabilities to satisfy the needs of testing of all types of web applications. Selenium Testing perfectly resembles flexibility. It plays a pivotal role in comparing expected test results against the actual behavior of an application. It allows various options in order to locate UI elements. In short, Selenium Testing is an important support system for the execution of tests on multiple browser platforms.
Understanding Selenium Testing
Most of the QA Engineers focus on limited tools which meet the needs of the project. However, gaining expertise about all the tools would put forth various options for approaching and solving diversified problems related to test automation. There are numerous ways by which functionality can be added to both, Selenium test scripts as well as Selenium’s framework. This enables high-end customization of your automation tests. As such, this is one of the greatest strengths of Selenium Testing as compared to other tools used for automation tests. Also, being open-source enables its users to download and modify it in an easy and sustainable manner.
What Type of Testing can be done Using Selenium?
As a suite of open-source software automation tools that include – Selenium IDE, Selenium RC, WebDriver, and Grid, it provides a plethora of solutions related to the testing of software applications. Before discussing the different types of testing procedures, this post highlights a few of the key features that have promoted Selenium testing a preferred choice of testers and developers across the globe.
- Quick access to reports
- Supports Agile methodology
- Simplifies the documentation process
Some of the most popular types of testing are given below:
1. Functional testing: It is designed to test every function that lies within the scope of testing in the application and ensures that it works as per the requirement document.
2. Regression testing: Regression testing includes two distinctive components – firstly, it ensures that if new functionality is added to an existing application, the new feature doesn’t disturb the normal functionality. Secondly, when known bugs are fixed, this testing checks that the fixing hasn’t disturbed the other functionalities that were working earlier.
3. UI (black box) testing: Also referred to as black-box testing, where the application is tested only as per the requirement document, and if any issues are bugs come up, they are reported accordingly.
4. Integration testing: This test specifically checks if all the modules that are prepared by different developers are working seamlessly together or not. The issues generally arise if the codes are not updated or if changes have not been deployed.
How is Selenium Testing Performed?
Now let’s see the basic elements of this testing process.
There are seven basic steps while creating a selenium test script that complies with every test case and application.
- Creating a WebDriver instance
- Web page navigation
- Finding the HTML element on the web page
- Performing action on the HTML element
- Evaluating the browser’s response
- Running and recording the tests
- Conclude
Conclusion
Since testing is one of the most critical components that define the success or failure of any project, selecting the best according to the needs is also a major task. Analyzing today’s competitive IT business environment, selenium testing is undoubtedly one of the best choices for performing automation testing. Easy-to-use functionality and a regular rise in demand is making it popular among testers, developers, and IT organizations. Alongside using it for the testing of the GUI and the functionality of the web-based applications, it is widely used as a unit testing kit for JavaScript.
The fact that it supports multiple browsers like Safari, Mozilla, IE, Chrome, Firefox and can execute multiple tests at a single time makes it an ideal choice for the testers. While comparing with other automation tools, selenium gives multiple options to add functionality to test scripts along with the framework. By minimizing the frequency of manual testing along with finding the bugs that are missed by the manual testing procedure, selenium testing has proved to be a clear winner in the testing arena.
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