Selenium Automation Testing: Writing the Automated Test Scripts

These numbers include a huge demand for technology that can redefine everything from enterprise operations to customer acquisition and sales. And since it is not feasible to carry the dynamism of the technological world with a manual assessment of quality, automation testing helps bridge the gap between the two.  

Though Selenium is one of the pioneer technologies that have streamlined the whole concept of automation testing, the only thing that causes resistance for most testers is the hassle of switching from manual to automation testing.  

Even though Selenium brings a huge open-source community of users, most people and even organizations tend to struggle when making a move on Selenium to simplify the entire task of testing. In this blog, we will aim at explaining Selenium as a test automation tool while sharing details on its components and the idea of writing test scripts. 

Selenium & It's Components 

Selenium is one of the most popular open-source test automation frameworks that allow the testing of web applications for different browsers, operating systems, and languages. Moreover, the advantage of getting it integrated with automation testing frameworks like JUnit and TestNG makes it even more approachable as a test automation tool. For this reason, most enterprises rely on selenium over any other modern frameworks. In other words, Selenium is a go-to framework for automating regression tests and simplifying the entire task of web browser testing.  

As long as it is concerned with the components of Selenium, it can be divided into: 

• Selenium IDE 

• Selenium WebDriver 

• Selenium Grid 

Selenium IDE 

Selenium IDE is the primary component of the Selenium automation framework that works as a browser plugin. It allows testers to write test scripts, execute them and quickly debug the scripts without switching for tools. It can easily run-on Chrome or Firefox but is much more than a script recorder. It allows testers to export test scripts in any programming language that is supported by selenium. Also, Selenium IDE allows automated generation of test scripts from the test actions making it function as a playback tool that allows repeated execution of recorded test scenarios.  

Selenium WebDriver 

Selenium WebDriver is a browser-specific component that offers testers an interface to write and execute the automation scripts for web application testing. Besides, Selenium WebDriver can be used to bind with any programming language simplifying the automation using browser-specific drivers.  

Also, selenium even allows integrating the language-supported frameworks, no matter if they are Behavior-driven or Technique-driven frameworks. All in all, automated testing that runs on selenium WebDriver allows expediting the test and release process through the integration of Jenkins, GitLab, and other CI/CD tools. 

Selenium Grid 

Selenium Grid brings you the advantage of experiencing parallel text execution. It allows you to improve the speed of the test process allowing tests to run at multiple browsers and platforms in parallel. Selenium Grid works by distributing tests on multiple devices where tests can be executed in any asynchronous manner.  

Also, the more advanced versions of Selenium 4 bring a completely re-engineered selenium grid that allows you to test in different modes. This means a tester could work on standalone mode, distributed mode, or Hub & Node mode, as per their convenience.  

Learning What Selenium 4 Is 

Before we begin with the process of running selenium test scripts, configuring the test scripts, and writing them, it is necessary to have a quick introduction to the latest version of Selenium.  

With improved Selenium IDE and Selenium Grid, Selenium 4 brings features like relative web locators and WebDriver APIs with W3C compliance. Selenium 4 quit JSON Wire Protocol to lead the communication and made a switch to W3C for allowing direct communication between browser and test scripts.  

Need to know more about Selenium 4? 

Read Here: Selenium Version 4: An All-New Approach to Automated Testing 

Being one of the most important architectural changes, the W3C protocol drives the standardization to Selenium 4 making it run highly stable tests with no flakiness. Moreover, Selenium 4 provides an option for using relative locators like near(), below(), etc. To fetch relative elements of a particular element in use.  

In addition to that, Selenium 4 has Action class and FluentWait class that allows simplified automation for the testers who need to get over the hassle of manually regressing or testing a web application.  

With all these insights, let us now quickly jump on the idea of writing and running the selenium test scripts. 

How To Configure & Write Test Scripts In Selenium? 

Though there are many power tools available in the market such as BrowserStack that allow easy integrations into the test environment that help automate the process of writing test scripts, being a quality assurance company, it is always good to understand the traditional way of writing test scripts. 

To configure and write a test script in selenium, you can either use Java or Maven. Here’s how it works in both ways: 

The Java Project 

• Open Eclipse. 

• Create a new project (File? New?Project) 

• Provide the project name and click to Finish. 

• Create a new class for the project. 

• To write the first test script, download the external jars 

• To add external jars, right-click project ? Build Path ? Configure Build Path, and click OK. 

The Maven Project 

• To begin download maven first. 

• Define the MAVEN_HOME system variable and update the same with the maven installed folder path. 

• Verify successful installation by using the mvn -version in the command prompt. 

• In the pom.xml file, add all the dependencies required to create and run the first Selenium test. 

• The process further involves creating Selenium dependencies to create tests. 

Since it can get complicated for the testers to switch to automation, using a tool like Browserstack could help simplify things. To write test scripts using BrowserStack, you can begin with  

• Getting all components like Java (JDK), Eclipse, and WebDriver Language bindings ready and configuring selenium Web driver using eclipse. 

• Create a BrowserStack account as Browserstack is a selenium grid that allows running tests for over 2000 different settings.  

• Choose automate option from the menu and start with configuring, integrating, and running the test. 

• Add necessary codes to run test scripts depending on the logic of the test case.  

• As every project has a different test logic, you can use predefined scripts on BrowserStack to create your test case template and run the code. 

• Prerequisites For Running Test Scripts In Selenium  

For running test scripts in Selenium, it is necessary for testers to work on configuring certain components that act as dependencies. If you are making a switch from manual testing services to automation testing on selenium, here are a few components that you need to configure: 

Java 

• Download and install JDK with JRE based on your operating system 

• Define a variable called JAVA_HOME with a value to JDK installation location 

• Update the path to bin folder within JDK installation folder when working on path variable 

• Confirm successful Java installation by checking through command prompt. 

IDE 

Again, you must check your operating system and other preferences to download and setup IDE for running test scripts. 

Drivers & Grid 

To successfully run tests in different browsers, make sure you choose the correct driver option and their version. Besides, web automation testers need to define Hub and Nodes in the grid by downloading them from the official selenium website. 

Working with Selenium can feel tricky at times. Especially when you are planning to make a switch from manual testing to automation testing services. However, a little research and precise execution from the team could help you streamline automation in your operations.