Selenium – Overview
Posted by Renu Kumari on July 3rd, 2022
What is selenium in simple words?
Selenium - Overview. Introduction. Selenium is an open-source and portable automated software testing tool for testing web applications. It has capabilities to operate across different browsers and operating systems. Selenium is not just a single tool but a set of tools that helps testers to automate web-based applications more efficiently.
Selenium can be easily deployed on platforms such as Windows, Linux, Solaris, and Macintosh. Moreover, it supports OS (Operating System) for mobile applications like iOS, windows mobile, and android.
Selenium supports a variety of programming languages through the use of drivers specific to each language. Languages supported by Selenium include C#, Java, Perl, PHP, Python, and Ruby. Currently, Selenium Web driver is most popular with Java and C#. Selenium test scripts can be coded in any of the supported programming languages and can be run directly in most modern web browsers. Browsers supported by Selenium include Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, and Safari.
Selenium can be used to automate functional tests and can be integrated with automation test tools such as Maven, Jenkins, & Docker to achieve continuous testing. It can also be integrated with tools such as TestNG, & JUnit for managing test cases and generating reports.
What is the selenium framework?
- Selenium is a portable framework for testing web applications. Selenium provides a playback tool for authoring functional tests without the need to learn a test scripting language (Selenium IDE).
Here is the list of tools
- Selenium Integrated Development Environment (IDE)
- Selenium Remote Control (RC)
- WebDriver
- Selenium Grid
How to Choose the Right Selenium Tool for Your Need
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Tool
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Why Choose?
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Selenium IDE
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- To learn about concepts on automated testing and Selenium, including:
- Selenese commands such as type, open, click and wait, assert, verify, etc.
- Locators such as id, name, XPath, CSS selector, etc.
- Executing customized JavaScript code using run Script
- Exporting test cases in various formats.
- To create tests with little or no prior knowledge in programming.
- To create simple test cases and test suites that you can export later to RC or WebDriver.
- To test a web application against Firefox and Chrome only.
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Selenium RC
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- To design a test using a more expressive language than Selenese
- To run your test against different browsers (except HtmlUnit) on different operating systems.
- To deploy your tests across multiple environments using Selenium Grid.
- To test your application against a new browser that supports JavaScript.
- To test web applications with complex AJAX-based scenarios.
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WebDriver
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- To use a certain programming language in designing your test case.
- To test applications that are rich in AJAX-based functionalities.
- To execute tests on the HTML Unit browser.
- To create customized test results.
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Selenium Grid
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- To run your Selenium RC scripts in multiple browsers and operating systems simultaneously.
- To run a huge test suite, that needs to complete in the soonest time possible.
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What are the pre-requisites for the Selenium Training?
It is advantageous, but not necessary, to have a basic understanding of the following in order to participate in the Selenium certification program: 1) Core Java 2) HTML 3) CSS 4) XML
Summary
- The entire Selenium Software Testing Suite is comprised of four components:
- Selenium IDE, a Firefox add-on that you can only use in creating relatively simple test cases and test suites.
- Selenium Remote Control, also known as Selenium 1, which is the first Selenium tool that allowed users to use programming languages in creating complex tests.
- WebDriver, the newer breakthrough that allows your test scripts to communicate directly to the browser, thereby controlling it from the OS level.
- Selenium Grid is also a tool that is used with Selenium RC to execute parallel tests across different browsers and operating systems.
- Selenium RC and WebDriver were merged to form Selenium 2.
- Selenium is more advantageous than QTP in terms of costs and flexibility. It also allows you to run tests in parallel, unlike in QTP where you are only allowed to run tests sequentially.
~Renu Kumari~
