Comeau Computing Tech Magazine 2024
Web application testing is an integral component of the development cycle and is crucial for guaranteeing the quality and stability of apps. Testing of applications enables developers to identify and address defects in the code before they affect users. It also aids in ensuring that the application functions properly across various operating systems and browsers.
The ability to test applications fast and effectively is what makes automated testing a popular method for performing application testing. Selenium is always the first topic that grabs attention when discussing automation testing. It is one of the most well-liked automated testing tools, and developers and testers all over the world use it. Why do developers prefer Selenium when there is such a wide variety of testing tools available on the market for the automation testing process?
Because of its distinctive and extensive features and advantages, Selenium is commonly utilized by developers in the testing profession. In this article, we’ll go into great detail about the benefits of using Selenium for automation testing as well as the challenges users could run into when utilizing it. Let’s start by defining Selenium automation testing.
Selenium
Internet users access the content using a wide variety of devices and browsers. Hence, producing content that renders appropriately on all devices has become a primary responsibility for developers. They must conduct cross browser testing for that. Although testing content on different browsers might be possible, doing so would take time and effort. Selenium is the most popular option among developers for automating cross-browser tests.
Developers can write and automate tests for web applications using Selenium, a well-liked open-source testing tool. Since it’s an open-source tool, there are no licensing fees involved. Selenium’s success is mostly attributable to its availability, usability, and simplicity, which enable testers to fulfill their requirements for web application testing.
It enables developers to create test scripts in a variety of programming languages (such as Python, Java, C#, Ruby, PHP, and JavaScript) to evaluate the functioning of online applications and run them on a variety of browsers and operating systems, including Chrome, Mozilla, Firefox, Safari, and IE.
Selenium is not a single tool but a collection of tools that can be utilized to satisfy diverse organizational needs. It can be used by a testing team to automate testing (mainly functional).
It has:
The Selenium WebDriver- Selenium Webdriver tool pushes and binds the browser to enable testing. Instead of relying on browser-based JavaScript commands to control the browser, it employs native operating system-level capability. To run tests, Selenium does not require a special server; instead, it interacts directly with the browser to take control of it.
SeleniumIntegrated Development Environment (IDE)- It is frequently employed to produce scripts, record, and playback user interactions in the browser, then export those interactions as reusable scripts.
The Selenium Grid- By enabling the concurrent execution of tests on several operating systems and browsers, it helps to reduce the time spent running tests. This is accomplished by simultaneously distributing the test commands across many machines and configurations.
Key benefits of Selenium Automation Testing
Selenium test automation offers several unique advantages that can be used by a wide range of organizations. Here are a few of the main advantages of using the Selenium automation testing tool for Selenium tests.
Execution of multiple tests
Time and effort savings are the main goals of automated testing. Selenium Grid allows for the parallel execution of numerous tests across many browsers, thus shortening the time required for test execution.
Integrations and reusability
It has already been mentioned that Selenium automation test suites are reusable and may be tested on several operating systems and browsers. However, to expand the testing scope, third-party frameworks, and add-ons are required because Selenium is not a complete web automation testing solution.
To manage test cases and produce reports, for instance, interaction with TestNG and JUnit is required. It requires integration with CI/CD tools like Jenkins, Maven, and Docker to achieve continuous testing. Additionally, it must be integrated with tools like Sikuli to perform image-based testing, and nearly all management solutions may be used to perform cross-browser testing with cloud-grid.
Support across multi-browsers and operating systems
Because different users use various operating systems and browsers, an automation solution must be compatible with each. Selenium offers a single script that works across all operating systems and browsers, eliminating the need to write separate scripts for each.
Selenium is a highly versatile tool that supports the majority of the world’s most popular browsers, including Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Internet Explorer, Opera, and Edge. Also, the Selenium script is compatible with a variety of operating systems, including Windows, Linux, Mac OS, UNIX, etc. Developers can, for instance, create Selenium test suites on any platform, such as Windows, and run those same test suites on another platform, such as Mac or Linux.
Testing can be carried out easily and efficiently
Selenium automation is regarded as being significantly quicker and simpler than other automation testing techniques. When compared to alternative automated testing solutions, the time needed to set up the Selenium framework is far less. The Selenium automation framework is relatively simple to use. It offers a simple user interface that makes it simple and efficient to develop and run test scripts.
Creating Selenium scripts is not the same as developing a complicated, long algorithm; rather, it involves writing a few lines of code to automate website functionality. Selenium has established itself as the most reliable web automation technology because it makes it simple to generate test scripts to verify functioning. Additionally, it enables testers to monitor their tests as they run. They can perform follow-up actions after thoroughly examining reports of Selenium tests.
Detects errors at an early stage
Early detection of defects during application development reduces the need for code rework, saving time and money. The use of selenium not only detects application flaws earlier but also maintains the overall speed of code development. This in turn aids the testing team in making sure that the functioning of the website is not affected.
Open source availability
The availability of Selenium as an open-source tool is just one of several factors that enhance its benefits. This turns it into a portable, open-source testing tool that requires no initial investment.
Testers and application developers frequently receive assistance from the Selenium community in automating web browser functions and functionalities. Selenium also helps to modify the code to improve code management and the functionality of built-in methods and classes.
Now that we are familiar with the key Selenium functionalities, let’s talk about some of the common problems that developers may have when creating Selenium automation tests.
Challenges of Selenium
Handling Pop-up windows
It might be challenging to automatically build tests in Selenium to handle pop-ups to either accept or close when a simple, prompt, or confirmation alert appears. Even though multiple windows and web-based pop-ups can be handled by the browser when it is running in the background through WebDriver. But one of the main limitations of Selenium is that it cannot test operating system-based pop-ups.
Dynamic web content
When a user first visits a website, the content that is available on the page may not be immediately visible. The new content either appears after clicking something on the website or when a specific amount of time has passed or the server requests it to appear on the page. This could imply that the page’s content is user-specific and changes depending on the user.
The handling of dynamic online content is one of the biggest issues in Selenium automation. Selenium uses the explicit wait feature to address this, allowing it to set a time limit for how long the automation testing process should wait for new material to load. Using the implicit wait feature is another option, however, outcomes are frequently inadequate.
Mobile testing
While Selenium can test on any operating system and browser on desktops, testing for responsive design on mobile operating systems like iOS and Android is the next challenge it must overcome. This is a problem because a huge percentage of end users access content using mobile devices. For instance, Selenium can test Facebook on the Mac’s Safari browser, but not on the iPhone 7’s mobile Safari.
As a remedy, the Selenium family offers the Appium testing framework. Using the WebDriver protocol, Appium is an open-source test automation framework that enables developers to automate the testing of mobile apps rather than web applications. Appium allows developers to test content on iOS and Android native, mobile, and hybrid apps.
Captcha
Usually, a captcha is used to make sure that only actual users access certain parts of a web service. It cannot be expected or assumed because distinct values appear each time it is generated. Because captchas cannot be automatically solved, employing them in Selenium automated testing presents another challenge.
Usually, a captcha is used to make sure that only actual users access certain parts of a web service. It cannot be expected or assumed because distinct values appear each time it is generated. Because there is no inherent ability to solve captchas, using them in Selenium automation testing presents additional issues.
Limited reporting
The test reports serve as a link between developers and testers. Selenium features don’t provide the necessary reporting capabilities in this situation. The generation and maintenance of reports become difficult for testers as a result. For this reason, a third-party solution like LambdaTest that can take screenshots of the browser and send reports complements Selenium testing the best.
Scalability
While Selenium permits conducting automated tests on a variety of operating systems and browsers, it is still limited in its capacity to execute several tests efficiently at once. In addition, because Selenium has a limited amount of resources, it can only perform tests in a specific order as the application scales.
To solve this problem, parallel testing can be used with a Selenium Grid, a device lab, or a third-party cloud framework like LambdaTest. Nevertheless, managing an in-house Selenium Grid Infrastructure and adding the newest devices to it is difficult and calls for specialized resources. Thus choosing a cloud platform like LambdaTest, which offers the resources to execute the tests, will be the best course of action.
LambdaTest is a digital experience testing platform for testing cross browser compatibility that provides an online cloud Selenium Grid of more than 3000 real devices, browsers, and operating systems for both desktop and mobile. All test automation frameworks & programming languages that Selenium supports are compatible with LambdaTest online Selenium Grid. To improve collaboration and create a delivery pipeline free of defects, it may also be integrated with CI/CD tools like Jenkins, CircleCI, etc. as well as project management systems like Jira, asana, and others.
Testers can perform Selenium testing in parallel with LambdaTest. This resolves the Selenium scalability issues by allowing many tests to run simultaneously across thousands of devices with various configurations. As a result, testers may run automated tests fast, shortening the gap between development and production.
Conclusion
To complete testing tasks more quickly and effectively, Selenium automated testing offers highly effective testing. So, it’s crucial to keep in mind the benefits and challenges of selenium test automation when applying it for application development.
