Selenium is a well-liked open source, portable platform that is automating web applications for the purpose of testing. The web based automation tool comes with record/ playback functionality for authoring tests. Those who are well-acquainted with the tool have no need for learning a test scripting language.
The platform also comes packed with a domain-specific language that is Selenese helping its users write tests in an array of popular programming languages such as Java, Scala, C#, Groovy, Python, PHP, etc.
Selenium: A real threat for its competitors
For saving time and cost, these days most organizations are giving a whirl to automated testing software. With a huge market in the same, it’s really a head-spinning task to find the top-rated testing software. These days, both Selenium and UFT are popular for automation testing. Though both the tools differ from each other in terms of features and functionality, these are considered by hundreds of thousands of people around the world. But recent reports suggest that, Selenium is surpassing all other similar tools and has become a real threat for its competitors like UFT.
Now it has become the first choice for many QA professionals as well as independent software testing service providers due to its umpteen features.
Salient features of Selenium that are affecting the market share of its rivals such as UFT:
- Supports a number of languages for writing tests
- You can run the tests against modern web browsers
- In terms of compatibility , it supports Windows, Linux and OS X platform
- Open-source performance testing software
- Can be used by web developers even without spending a single penny
- Supports Testing Frameworks and IDEs
- Offers an option for creating complete test automation suite
- Completes all the assigned test execution work within a stipulated amount of time
Pros and Cons of Selenium
The Pros:
- The software can be extended for various different technologies that represent DOM
- Supports smartphone devices
- Has the capability of executing scripts on differentOS
- Executing tests within a web browser. Thus, demands no focus during script execution
- It comes with the ability to execute an array of scripts across different web browsers
The Cons:
While the software do come with some cons, but that doesn’t degrade the quality and popularity of this software in any manner. Here we go:
- The support it provides is only for web based applications
- There is no functionality of test report generation
- It does not support recovery scenario feature
- Because of no IDE support, it makes the development of scripts really slow
- There is no ability for controlling the access within the browser
- It makes us dependent in programming language for parameterization
Why Selenium Training is Important?
It can be really a challenging task to create automated tests for web applications. For those who are interested in the same domain, not to worry as Selenium is there. Selection of an automation tool and the development of a framework to write tests can be a major hindrance. With the help of Selenium training, one can easily learn regarding how to create automated tests for web applications. Besides, it can also prove helpful for creating a basic web application testing framework.
The Selenium course is aimed for manual testers and teams. Trainees who don’t have any experience of any test automation tool or programming language can get started with the basics of automation and programming concepts and then later move on to advanced training which will help in writing Selenium tests.
Understand various tool of Selenium making it a diamond in the eyes of testers
Selenium packs a wide range of components and each one of them plays a vital role in the development of web application test automation. Let’s check out all the Selenium components one-by-one:
It is an all-in-one integrated development environment for performing Selenium tests. You can use Selenium IDE as a Firefox extension and do the work like recording, debugging and editing of tests. Formerly known as Selenium recorder, the web-tool lets you automatically record and edits various scripts. Apart from that, it comes with the ability to provide auto-completion support. Using it, you can even more various commands around instantly.
All the scripts processed through the utility are recorded in Selenese. Then this scripting language gives commands to perform actions in a specific browser and to retrieve data out of the resulting pages.
- Selenium WebDriver
This component of Selenium accepts commands and then transmits them to a browser. All this process is implemented through a browser driver which helps in sending commands to a browser and then retrieves results.
Selenium 1 is dependents on the Selenium server for running tests. But this is not the case with Selenium WebDriver. It does not make demand for a special server to perform tests. Instead, Selenium WebDriver directly gives a run to a browser instance and also controls it. For executing tests on remote systems, one can make use of Selenium Grid along with WebDriver.
- Selenium Grid
Selenium Grid is a server allowing tests to make use of web browser instances that are running on remote machines. With the help of this Selenium component, one server works as a hub. For obtaining access for browser instances, tests make contact with the hub. There are a number of servers included in a hub and they offer access to browser instances. The hub also allows tests to employ these instances. Using Selenium Grid, tests can be run simultaneously on multiple machines and with the help of this many different browser versions and browser configurations can also be managed centrally.
- Selenium Client API
Regardless of writing tests in Selenese language, the tests can be written in other various programming languages as well. Such tests communicate with Selenium with the help of calling methods available in the Selenium Client API.
At present, a wide range of client APIs can be accessed with it like for Java, Ruby, and Python, JavaScript, and C#. With the update in Selenium (Selenium 2), a new Client API makes arrival. However, the support for old API is still there.
- Selenium Remote Control
Written in Java, this is another Selenium component which is basically a server that accepts commands via HTTP for the browser.
Verdict
Selenium is all about automating web applications. With the help of this tool, one can execute tests on multiple machines at the same time and on different operating systems. Though, to be a master of Selenium, proper Selenium training is important. With such a training, an individual could be able to work with data-driven framework, perform cross-browser testing, can work with keyword-driven framework, Selenium RC, Selenium IDE, Selenium Grid, and Selenium WebDriver.