In the modern web development landscape, what is Selenium WebDriver is one of the most frequently asked questions to developers and testers aiming at automating web testing. With the evolving technologies and frameworks testing web applications and delivering top-notch end-user experiences has become increasingly complex.
Selenium is a well-known web automation framework, primarily built to automate and control browser interactions. It provides developers with a powerful suite of tools each catering to different aspects of web browser automation and testing across different browsers and platforms. Selenium WebDriver is one of the most widely used tools of the Selenium test suite.
In this article, we will explore Selenium WebDriver, starting from breaking down what WebDriver is, to detailed insight into its features. While discussing that we will also understand its benefits and best practices. So let’s begin.
What is WebDriver?
Selenium WebDriver combines both language bindings and browser control code, commonly referred to as WebDriver. WebDriver is a user-friendly interface that works across platforms and programming languages, allowing testers to control browser actions like finding and manipulating DOM elements or managing user agent behavior locally or remotely using a simple and concise programming interface.
This tool is crucial for automating browser tests across different browsers and operating systems; however, it can also be used to enable browser scripts to control the web browser with its compact easy-to-use object-oriented API. This specification aims to focus on web browser compatibility and ensuring a smooth user experience.
A WebDriver drives a browser natively, just like a user would, using a Selenium server. Testers can also control a browser from another machine using WebDriver, enabling introspection and control of user agents.
Architecture of Selenium WebDriver
Selenium WebDriver Architecture is composed of four major components:
Selenium Client Library/Language Binding- Selenium WebDriver is built to support multiple language bindings such as Ruby, Python, Java, etc. to provide various language compatibility. For example, if developers want to use the browser driver in Python, they use the Python Bindings. All the supported language bindings can be downloaded from the official Selenium website.
W3C WebDriver Protocol- W3C stands for the World Wide Web Consortium. It is an international community for developing and maintaining standards and guidelines for the World Wide Web, aiming to ensure the long-term growth and compatibility of the Web. Selenium WebDriver adheres to the standards and specifications of W3C for web automation.
Using the World Wide Web Consortium standard Selenium WebDriver makes communication easy and direct since there remains no overhead of HTTP requests and responses for communicating between the WebDriver client and the browser driver. This improved communication leads to more stability and enhanced browser compatibility, performance, and efficiency.
Browser Drivers- Selenium uses a driver specific to each browser that handles all the logic by establishing a secure connection with the browser without revealing the internal logic of browser functionality. ChromeDriver, GeckoDriver, SafariDriver, and MicrosoftEdge driver are some browser drivers.
Browsers- Browsers undertake the test executions and act as the endpoint. Selenium WebDriver supports multiple browsers including Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Edge, Internet Explorer, etc.
Key Features of Selenium WebDriver
Some of the key features of Selenium WebDriver are discussed below.
- One of the significant features of Selenium WebDriver is its open-source nature. It is easily downloadable from the official Selenium website.
- WebDriver’s support for multiple programming languages like Python, PHP, Java, JavaScript, C#, and Ruby is one of its top features. This gives web developers the flexibility to write test scripts using the language they are most comfortable in.
- Selenium Web Driver can interact with web apps and the web elements in a browser just like a real user would using browser native support. This enables testing on various browsers like Chrome, Firefox, IE, Opera, and Edge. This capability provides an efficient automated solution for cross-browser testing.
- Selenium WebDrivers is capable of handling complex web elements like radio buttons, dropdowns, alerts, etc with ease by using dynamic locators
- The Selenium WebDriver API empowers testers to control web browsers’ actions through code, such as clicking links and filling out forms.
- The parallel testing approach supported by Selenium WebDriver helps testers run multiple tests simultaneously across multiple machines. This helps in speeding up test execution especially when dealing with a large number of tests.
- Selenium WebDriver’s capabilities can be further enhanced by installing plugins or user extensions, enabling users to add new features or customize existing ones based on specific testing needs.
- Selenium WebDriver’s detailed test reports generation and real-time dashboards help testers monitor progress and quickly identify issues in automated tests.
Benefits of using Selenium WebDriver
Selenium WebDriver provides a wide range of expected functionality. Below are some reasons why using Selenium WebDriver is beneficial.
Platform Compatibility
Selenium WebDriver can work across various operating systems, including Linux, UNIX, Mac, and Windows. This flexibility enables testers to create customized testing suites usable on any platform, allowing test case creation on one operating system and execution on another.
Multiple Framework Integration
Selenium WebDriver can be integrated with various testing frameworks like Maven to compile source code. For easy automation testing and reporting it also integrates with TestNG, and Jenkins, enabling Continuous Integration or Continuous Delivery of automated build and deployment.
Cross-device testing
Selenium WebDriver provides support for testing across multiple devices, allowing developers to write automated test cases that can run on various devices including iPhones, Blackberrys, and Android. This flexibility thereby helps in addressing cross-device issues.
Community support
Selenium WebDriver is community-driven, which enables regular upgrades and updates. These updates are easily available when needed, and require no special training to access them, making Selenium WebDriver both budget-friendly and resourceful.
Add-ons and reusability
Selenium WebDriver’s browser compatibility testing capabilities cover every functionality testing aspect of the application, allowing the tester to run multiple testing scenarios. Customizable add-on capability offers significant benefits that further broaden the scope of application testing with WebDriver.
Easy identification of Web Elements
Selenium WebDriver provides various classes and methods as solutions for potential problems in automation testing. Its robust set of dynamic locators makes it easy to identify complex web elements on web apps like radio buttons, dropdowns, alerts, and more.
Mouse cursor and keyboard simulation
Using WebDriver testers can automate simple scenarios like key press events, and mouse clicks or complex ones like multiple item selection, dragging and dropping, and clicking and holding.
Selenium WebDriver Limitations
Even though Selenium WebDriver is a useful tool, it comes with certain limitations that are important to know for effective testing.
- WebDriver is designed for web applications and lacks support for testing desktop apps. It requires additional tools for that.
- WebDriver faces difficulties in handling dynamic content. If elements load dynamically, it may try to interact with them before or after they appear.
- Automated image testing with Selenium alone is not possible. Visual automation programs like Sikuli need to be integrated into the Selenium framework to test images.
- CAPTCHA and reCAPTCHA verification steps require manual intervention to prevent automation, and WebDriver can’t handle it.
- WebDriver is limited with built-in logging or reporting capability, external plug-in like TestNG is required to generate test reports.
- Selenium WebDriver cannot test mobile apps and has limited support for multi-touch actions. It requires tools like Appium to achieve that.
- Scripting in WebDriver requires a deep understanding and extensive knowledge of DOM and web technologies. Testers not skilled or don’t know HTML and CSS may find it challenging.
Understanding these limitations helps testers manage expected results and choose the right testing approach for different scenarios.
Selenium WebDriver best practices
Below are some of the best practices of Selenium WebDriver implementation which can make a tester’s life much easier.
Avoid blocking sleep calls
One of the best practices in Selenium test automation is avoiding blocking sleep calls. Blocking sleep calls is typically implemented to delay the execution so that web elements get enough time to load.
Relying on blocking sleep calls will completely block the thread and effectively shut down the process. Instead, incorporating efficient waiting strategies into Selenium tests ensures that when tests need to be revisited or updated, enhancing the performance and reliability of the Selenium automation efforts.
Set naming conventions
For smooth and efficient Selenium test management one critical practice is using standard naming conventions for test cases and suites. This will aid in future enhancements and understandability of file types for those who might work on the tests later. Test names will make it easy to figure out which functionalities are broken if tests fail during the execution stage, speeding up development and Selenium testing.
Implement logging and reporting
Logging can be a huge savior when locating failing test cases in an extensive test suite. console logs at appropriate places in the test code can help pinpoint and understand the problem.
Along with logging, reporting also helps in determining the pass/fail status of the tests, thus helping in keeping track of the progression of test suites and corresponding test results. Hence logging and reporting are considered one of the best practices in Selenium test automation.
Using Page Object Model
Keeping in mind the Selenium test script’s maintainability and scalability is another best practice. Page Objects is a popular web UI automation pattern that can be used to improve test maintenance and reduce code duplication.
Using the Page Objects model in Selenium automation testing is useful because it helps reduce the code size by centralizing the object repository in one place on a web page that is the page object class. Hence, every web page will have its corresponding page object class when tested and different page classes and can be reused across multiple Selenium test scripts automation with minimal changes.
Create a browser compatibility matrix
Cross-browser testing is a challenging task as narrowing down a vast number of browsers and their versions as well as operating system combinations to run automated tests on is quite difficult. To make this task easier, it is recommended to use a browser compatibility matrix.
A browser compatibility matrix provides vital data from multiple metrics, including browser, device, and operating system usage numbers, product analysis, geolocation, target audience preference, and competitor analysis. Thereby reducing the development and testing efforts by making the process more manageable.
Running Selenium tests on real devices
Although Selenium testing can be performed on emulators and simulators, accurate test results can only be achieved when web apps and websites are tested on real devices and in real user conditions.
For ensuring websites and web apps render the same across different devices and browsers as well as providing a high-quality and consistent user experience, using real devices in the real environment setup makes a considerable difference. However getting a wide range of the latest devices, browsers, and operating system combinations is not handy, making it challenging for QAs to test on desired combinations.
To make things easier it is best to invest in a real device cloud like LambdaTest that allows testers to run both automated and manual testing of websites, web applications, and mobile applications. This platform allows testing on a wide range of devices and browser combinations in real-time to discover maximum bugs and eventually deliver a robust application.
LambdaTest is an AI-powered test orchestration and execution platform that lets testers run manual and automated testing at scale by providing access to a cloud Selenium grid of more than 3000 environments, real devices, and browser versions for maximum test coverage.
Among various automation testing tools available, LambdaTest stands out as one of the most reliable and scalable cloud-based automation testing platforms. It provides a comprehensive infrastructure for cross-device and cross-browser testing without any hassle of setting up the device and environment.
Almost all popular test frameworks like PyTest, PyUnit, TestNG, Cucumber, Puppeteer, etc. are supported by LambdaTest for executing Selenium tests online in parallel on different environments, reducing the test execution time, and delivering consistent and reliable testing results.
Conclusion
In conclusion, it can be said that Selenium WebDriver is one of the most powerful resources in a tester’s toolkit. Using Selenium WebDriver testers can choose from several programming languages to create test scripts. It is a web automation tool that lets testers run tests across multiple browsers, and automate the process of checking that web application or website functions as intended on different browsers. Hope, this Selenium WebDriver tutorial provides users with the many functions and uses of Selenium.
