Selenium FAQ’s

In Selenium 2.0 the Web Testing tools Selenium RC and WebDriver are consolidated in single tool.

Assertion is used as a verification point. It verifies that the state of the application conforms to what is expected.  The asserion types are : “assert” , “verify” and “waitFor”.

Automation testing uses the automation tools to write and execute test cases. No manual involvement is necessary for executing an automated test suite. Testers prefer the automation tools to write test cases and test scripts and then group into test suites.

The advantages of automation testing are :

• It supports both functional and performance test on an application.
• It facilitates parallel execution.
• It supports the execution of repeated test cases.
• It improves accuracy because there are no chances of human errors.
• It aids in testing a large test matrix.
• It saves time and money.

Selenium supports the testing like :

Functional Testing

Regression Testing

The limitations of Selenium are :

• Selenium supports the testing of only web-based applications
• Selenium cannot be used to test Mobile applications
• It cannot test Captcha and Barcode readers
• Reports can only be generated using third-party tools like TestNG or JUnit.
• As Selenium is a free tool, there is no ready vendor support through the user can find numerous helping communities.
• The user is expected to possess prior programming language knowledge.

Selenium IDE is the simplest and easiest tool within the Selenium Package. Its record and playback feature makes it exceptionally easy to learn with minimal acquaintances to any programming language. Selenium IDE is an ideal tool for a naïve user.

Selenese is the language which is used to write test scripts in Selenium IDE.

The commonly used Automation Testing tools for Non-Functional Automation are as follows.

• Load Runner, provided by Hp.
• JMeter, provided by Apache.
• Burp Suite, provided by PortSwigger.
• Acunetix, provided by Acunetix.

The locator is an address that identifies a web element uniquely within the webpage. Thus, to identify web elements accurately and precisely we have different types of locators in Selenium:

ID

ClassName

Name

TagName

LinkText

PartialLinkText

Xpath

CSS Selector

DOM

XPath is used to locate a web element based on its XML path. XML is a Extensible Markup Language and which is used to store, organize and transport arbitrary data. It stores the data in a key-value pair which is very much similar to HTML tags. As both are markup languages and fall under the same umbrella, XPath can be used to locate HTML elements.

The fundamental behind locating elements using XPath is the traversing between various elements across the entire page and thus enabling a user to find an element with the reference of another element.

Selenium Grid can be used to execute same or different test scripts on multiple platforms and browsers concurrently to achieve distributed test execution, testing under different environments and saving execution time remarkably.

Selenium RC alone is also referred to as Selenium 1.

Selenium RC and WebDriver, in a combination, are popularly known as Selenium 2.

Selenium is not just a single tool but a software having a different approach to support automation testing. It comprises of four major components which include:

Selenium Integrated Development Environment (IDE)

Selenium Remote Control (Now Deprecated)

WebDriver

Selenium Grid

WebDriver is the latest selenium tool.

Selenium supports various operating systems, browsers and programming languages. They are :

• Programming Languages: C#, Java, Python, PHP, Ruby, Perl, JavaScript.
• Operating Systems: Android, iOS, Windows, Linux, Mac, Solaris.
• Browsers: Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Internet Explorer, Edge, Opera, Safari, etc.

The following syntax can be used to launch Browser:

• WebDriver driver = new FirefoxDriver();
• WebDriver driver = new ChromeDriver();
• WebDriver driver = new InternetExplorerDriver();

The different types of drivers available in WebDriver are:

ChromeDriver

FirefoxDriver

InternetExplorerDriver

OperaDriver

SafariDriver

AndroidDriver

IPhoneDriver

HtmlUnitDriver

There are two types of waits available in WebDriver, Implicit Wait and Explicit Wait WebDriver.

Implicit Wait : It is used to provide a default waiting time (say 30 seconds) between each consecutive test step/command across the entire test script. Thus, the subsequent test step would only execute when the 30 seconds have elapsed after executing the previous test step/command.

Explicit Wait: It is used to halt the execution till the time a particular condition is met or the maximum time has elapsed. Unlike Implicit waits, explicit waits are applied for a particular instance only.