Limited Time Offer!

For Less Than the Cost of a Starbucks Coffee, Access All DevOpsSchool Videos on YouTube Unlimitedly.
Master DevOps, SRE, DevSecOps Skills!

Enroll Now
DevOps Tooling

What is Selenium and How it works? An Overview and Its Use Cases

March 25, 2022 Leave a Comment

History & Origin of Selenium

Selenium was born in 2004 when Jason Huggins—an engineer at ThoughtWorks—was working on an application that required a lot of manual testing. They developed JavaScript code that can automate the control of browsers, greatly streamlining the testing process. The code became known as “Selenium Remote Control” and was open-sourced later that year. Over the next few years, other developers joined the project and a few Selenium-related projects were born, including Selenium Grid, Selenium IDE, and Selenium WebDriver. This increasingly powerful set of tools is, by far, essentially a fully coordinated testing framework.

What is Selenium?

Selenium is one of the most renowned open-source test automation frameworks. Selenium allows test automation of web apps or websites across different browsers & operating systems. Selenium offers compatibility with multiple programming languages such as Java, JavaScript, Python, C#, and more, allowing testers to automate their website testing in any programming language that they are comfortable with. Using the Selenium framework, testers are able to rapidly distribute test cycles by automating test cases over and over again. When integrated with the CI/CD pipeline, Selenium can help with a robust, bug-free release deployment pipeline as well.

Features of Selenium

  • Selenium supports multiple browsers: Selenium supports multiple browsers like Google Chrome, Safari, Firefox, Opera, etc. One can launch any browser by just giving a simple command.
  • Multiple Programming Languages Support: Selenium supports multiple programming languages for writing test scripts. This covers Java, Python, “C#”, Perl, etc.
  • Speed (speed) and execution: There is no need for an intermediate server as Selenium communicates with the browser directly.
  • Web Elements Identification and Ease of Use: Locators in WebDriver help in locating web elements in web applications. This advantage is much easier for testers to implement.
  • Open Source and Portable: This is one of the major advantages that Selenium is open-source and portable. Selenium can be downloaded from its official site at https://www.selenium.dev/downloads/.
  • Works on Various Operating Systems: Selenium Web Driver Script can work on various OS like Linux, Mac, Chrome.
  • Simple commands: Selenium has very simple commands to implement. It can be learned easily.
  • Server Installation Not Required Selenium Web Driver does not require the server to be installed, as it directly interacts with the browser.

Why use Selenium?

As we are now familiar with the make-up of Selenium and the tools at hand, let’s take a look at the main points or benefits of Selenium and why it is a great tool for automation testing:

  • Open Source: Selenium is open source, this means that no licensing or cost is required, it is totally free to download and use. This is not the case for many other automation tools out there.
  • Mimic User Actions: As stated earlier, Selenium WebDriver is able to mimic user input, in real scenarios, you are able to automate events like key presses, mouse clicks, drag and drop, click and hold, selecting and much more.
  • Easy Implementation: Selenium WebDriver is known for being a user-friendly automation tool. Selenium being Open Source means that users are able to develop extensions for their own needs.
  • Tool for every scenario: As mentioned earlier, Selenium is a suite of tools, and you will most likely find something that fits your scenario and your way of working.
  • Language Support: One big benefit is multilingual support. Selenium supports all major languages like Java, JavaScript, Python, Ruby, C sharp, Perl, .Net and PHP, giving the developer a lot of freedom and flexibility.
  • Browser, Operating System & Device support: Selenium supports many different browsers Chrome, Firefox, Opera, Internet Explorer, Edge, and Safari as well as operating systems (Windows, Linux, Mac)
  • Framework Support: Selenium also supports a multitude of frameworks like Maven, Junit, TestNG to make it easier to automate testing. CI and CD tools like Jenkins is also supported, for automating the deployment process.
  • Reusability: Scripts written for WebDriver is cross-browser compatible. Testers can therefore run multiple testing scenarios with the same base.
  • Community Support: The Selenium community is quite active and open. Therefore, there is a lot of information and help available when needed.
  • Advanced User Input: With WebDriver it is possible to request clicking of the browser back and front buttons. A practical feature when testing money transfer applications for example. This feature is not found in many tools, especially open source.

Advantages of Selenium

  • Ease Of Implementation
  • Flexibility
  • Open Source Availability
  • Language and Framework Support
  • Multi-Browser Support
  • Support Across Various Operating Systems
  • Reusability and Integrations
  • Parallel Test Execution and Faster Go-to-Market

Disadvantages of in Selenium

  • It supports Web-based applications only. …
  • No reliable Technical Support from anybody. …
  • Limited support for Image Testing
  • Difficult to use takes more time to create Test cases. …
  • Difficult to Setup Test Environment when it compares to Vendor Tools like UFT, RFT, SilkTest, etc… …
  • Limited support for Image Testing

Best Selenium Alternative

  • Android Studio.
  • Visual Studio IDE.
  • Android Studio.
  • Appium.
  • Xcode integrated development environment (IDE)
  • AppExchange.
  • Tricentis qTest.
  • Cypress.

Best resources to learn Selenium

https://devopsschool.com/

https://www.devopsschool.com/blog/?s=Selenium

Free Video Tutorials Selenium

Selenium Interview Questions and Answers

1. What are the different types of automation testing?
Regression testing, smoke testing, and sanity testing are different types of automation testing.

2. What are the maximum numbers of test cases that can be automated per day?
The number of test cases automated per day by the tester depends upon the complexity of the web application. In general, it is estimated that the tester automates 2 to 5 test scenarios per day if the complexity is low. One or fewer test cases are expected if the complexity is high. Selenium Course in Chennai helps to prepare for the interviews with the practical-oriented training.

3. What are the different types of testing frameworks?
Data-driven testing framework, keyword-driven testing framework, and hybrid testing framework are the three types of testing frameworks.

4. Explain the process of how the automation framework is used?
The test automation framework starts with the process as the programming language, the framework used, test base class, element locators, tests- page objects, page factory, utility functions file, property files, Test NG annotations, how we parameterize tests using excel files, Test NG annotations, parameterize tests using excel files, error screenshots, generating reports, e-mailing reports, version control system used and continuous integration tool.

5. What are the reasons to select the selenium automation tool?
Free and open-source, have a large user base, cross-browser compatibility, platform compatibility, and the support to the multiple programming languages such as Java, pearl, Python, PHP, and C#.

6. What are the components of selenium?
Selenium IDE, Selenium RC, Selenium WebDriver, and selenium Grid are the four components of selenium.

7. Explain Selenium IDE?
Selenium IDE is the firefox plugin and simplest framework in the Selenium suite. Selenium IDE is used for creating scripts or test cases and Selenium RC or selenium Web Driver is used for more advanced or robust test cases.

8. Explain Selenese?
In the selenium IDE, selenite language is used to write the test scripts. Best Selenium Training in Chennai aid the students to get placed in the top companies.

9. Which browser supports selenium IDE?
Firefox is the only browser that supports the selenium IDE.

10. Explain Selenium Web Driver?
Selenium Web Driver AKA selenium 2 accepts the commands and sends them to a browser. It directly communicates with the browser and is implemented through a browser-specific driver. Selenium Web Driver supports multiple languages like Java, C#, PHP, Python, Perl, and Ruby and it is the framework for automating the web application.

11. Explain the Selenium Grid?
Selenium Grid is used to run the tests in different machines against the different browsers and it is used together with Selenium RC. It is used to run the test in multiple platforms and environments like different machines, different browsers, and different operating systems.

12. Describe the hub in Selenium Grid?
A hub is a server that controls the test execution in multiple machines.

13. Explain node in Selenium Grid?
Node is the machine that is attached to the hub and there can be multiple nodes in a single selenium Grid. Best Selenium Training Institute in Chennai with the best reviews from the students conducts the classes with peer approach and practical approach.

14. List the different types of Web Driver APIs available in selenium?

Firefox Driver, Gecko Driver, Internet Explorer Driver, Chrome Driver, HTML Unit Driver, Opera Driver, Safari Driver, Android Driver, iPhone driver, and event firing web driver are some of the Web Driver APIs in selenium.

15. Name the open-source frameworks supported by the Selenium WebDriver?
JUnit and TestNG are the open-source frameworks supported by the selenium web driver.

16. What are the locators available in the Selenium WebDriver?
ID, ClassName, Name, Tagname, LinkText, PartialLinktext, XPath, and CSS selector are the locators in the Selenium Web Driver.
Hope this blog will be helpful for the one who is looking to kick start their career in selenium. There is a huge selenium Job Opening in Chennai.

17. What is Selenium?
Selenium is the robust test automation suite that is used for automating web-based applications. Selenium supports programming languages, multiple browsers, and platforms.

18. What are the different forms of selenium?
Selenium comes in four forms and they are as followed

Selenium RC
Selenium IDE
Selenium Grid
Selenium WebDriver

19. Which browsers/drivers are supported by Selenium Webdriver?
Listed below are the browser /drivers that are supported by Selenium Webdriver.

Safari – SafariDriver
Firefox – FireFoxDriver
IOS – ios-driver/Appium
Android – Selendroid/Appium
Google Chrome – ChromeDriver
Internet Explorer – Internet Explorer Driver
HtmlUnit (Headless browser) – HtmlUnitDriver

20. What is the testing type which is supported by Selenium WebDriver?
Selenium web driver is used for performing automation functions and regression testing. These are Basic Selenium Interview questions asked for freshers in an interview.

Rajesh Kumar
Follow me
Latest posts by Rajesh Kumar (see all)
Subscribe
Notify of
guest
0 Comments
Newest
Oldest Most Voted
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
0
Would love your thoughts, please comment.x
()
x