Benefits of Automation testing are:

1. Supports execution of repeated test cases

2. Aids in testing a large test matrix

3. Enables parallel execution

4. Encourages unattended execution

5. Improves accuracy thereby reducing human generated errors

6. Saves time and money

Learn more about Selenium

Selenium supports the following types of testing :

• Functional Testing

• Regression Testing

Following are the limitations of Selenium :

• Selenium supports testing of only web based applications

• Mobile applications cannot be tested using Selenium

• Captcha and Bar code readers cannot be tested using Selenium

• Reports can only be generated using third party tools like TestNG or Junit

• As Selenium is a free tool, thus there is no ready vendor support though the user can find numerous helping communities

• User is expected to possess prior programming language knowledge

Selenium

1. is free and open source

2. have a large user base and helping communities

3. have cross Browser compatibility (Firefox, chrome, Internet Explorer, Safari etc.)

4. have great platform compatibility (Windows, Mac OS, Linux etc.)

5. supports multiple programming languages (Java, C#, Ruby, Python, Pearl etc.)

6. has fresh and regular repository developments

7. supports distributed testing

Selenium is one of the most popular automated testing suites. Selenium is designed in a way to support and encourage automation testing of functional aspects of web based applications and a wide range of browsers and platforms. Due to its existence in the open source community, it has become one of the most accepted tools amongst the testing professionals.

Selenium is not just a single tool or a utility, rather a package of several testing tools and for the same reason it is referred to as a Suite. Each of these tools is designed to cater different testing and test environment requirements.

The suite package constitutes of the following sets of tools :

• Selenium Integrated Development Environment (IDE) – Selenium IDE is a record and playback tool. It is distributed as a Firefox Plugin.

• Selenium Remote Control (RC) – Selenium RC is a server that allows user to create test scripts in a desired programming language. It also allows executing test scripts within the large spectrum of browsers.

• Selenium WebDriver – WebDriver is a different tool altogether that has various advantages over Selenium RC. WebDriver directly communicates with the web browser and uses its native compatibility to automate.

• Selenium Grid – Selenium Grid is used to distribute your test execution on multiple platforms and environments concurrently.

Selenium RC and WebDriver, in a combination are popularly known as Selenium 2. Selenium RC alone is also referred as Selenium 1.

WebDriver.

The different drivers available in WebDriver are :

• FirefoxDriver

• InternetExplorerDriver

• ChromeDriver

• SafariDriver

• OperaDriver

• AndroidDriver

• IPhoneDriver

• HtmlUnitDriver

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

There are two types of waits available in WebDriver:

1. Implicit Wait

2. Explicit Wait

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

Explicit Wait : Explicit waits are 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.

User can use sendKeys(“String to be entered”) to enter the string in the textbox.

Syntax :

WebElement username = drv.findElement(By.id(“Email”));
// entering username
username.sendKeys(“sth”);

Locator can be termed as 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

The use of data on paths through the code.

Assert :
Assert command checks whether the given condition is true or false. Let’s say we assert whether the given element is present on the web page or not. If the condition is true then the program control will execute the next test step but if the condition is false, the execution would stop and no further test would be executed.

Verify :
Verify command also checks whether the given condition is true or false. Irrespective of the condition being true or false, the program execution doesn’t halts i.e. any failure during verification would not stop the execution and all the test steps would be executed.

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

Xpath is used to locate a web element based on its XML path. XML stands for Extensible Markup Language and is used to store, organize and transport arbitrary data. It stores data in a key-value pair which is very much similar to HTML tags. Both being markup languages and since they 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.

WebDriver facilitates the user with the following methods to check the visibility of the web elements. These web elements can be buttons, drop boxes, checkboxes, radio buttons, labels etc.

1. isDisplayed()

2. isSelected()

3. isEnabled()

Syntax :

isDisplayed():
boolean buttonPresence = driver.findElement(By.id(“gbqfba”)).isDisplayed();

isSelected():
boolean buttonSelected =driver.findElement(By.id(“gbqfba”)).isDisplayed();

isEnabled():
boolean searchIconEnabled = driver.findElement(By.id(“gbqfb”)).isEnabled();

Get command is used to retrieve the inner text of the specified web element. The command doesn’t require any parameter but returns a string value. It is also one of the extensively used commands for verification of messages, labels, errors etc displayed on the web pages.

Syntax :

String Text = driver.findElement(By.id(“Text”)).getText();

Single Slash “/” –
Single slash is used to create Xpath with absolute path i.e. the xpath would be created to start selection from the document node/start node.

Double Slash “//” –
Double slash is used to create Xpath with relative path i.e. the xpath would be created to start selection from anywhere within the document.

Value in the drop down can be selected using WebDriver’s Select class.

Syntax:

selectByValue:
Select selectByValue = new Select(driver.findElement(By.id(“SelectID_One”)));
selectByValue.selectByValue(“greenvalue”);

selectByVisibleText:
Select selectByVisibleText = new Select (driver.findElement(By.id(“SelectID_Two”)));
selectByVisibleText.selectByVisibleText(“Lime”);

selectByIndex:
Select selectByIndex = new Select(driver.findElement(By.id(“SelectID_Three”)));
selectByIndex.selectByIndex(2);

Following are the navigation commands:

navigate().back() – The above command requires no parameters and takes back the user to the previous webpage in the web browser’s history.

Sample code :

driver.navigate().back();

navigate().forward() – 
This command lets the user to navigate to the next web page with reference to the browser’s history.

Sample code:
driver.navigate().forward();


navigate().refresh() –
This command lets the user to refresh the current web page there by reloading all the web elements.

Sample code:
driver.navigate().refresh();


navigate().to() – 
This command lets the user to launch a new web browser window and navigate to the specified URL.

Sample code:
driver.navigate().to(“https://google.com”);

The problem of same origin policy disallows to access the DOM of a document from an origin that is different from the origin we are trying to access the document.

Origin is a sequential combination of scheme, host and port of the URL. For example, for a URL http://www.softwaretestinghelp.com/resources/, the origin is a combination of http, softwaretestinghelp.com, 80 correspondingly.

Thus the Selenium Core (JavaScript Program) cannot access the elements from an origin that is different from where it was launched. For Example, if I have launched the JavaScript Program from “http://www.softwaretestinghelp.com”, then I would be able to access the pages within the same domain such as “http://www.softwaretestinghelp.com/resources” or “http://www.softwaretestinghelp.com/istqb-free-updates/”. The other domains like google.com, seleniumhq.org would no more be accessible.

So, In order to handle same origin policy, Selenium Remote Control was introduced.

driver.findElement(By.linkText(“Google”)).click();

The command finds the element using link text and then click on that element and thus the user would be re-directed to the corresponding page.

The above mentioned link can also be accessed by using the following command.

driver.findElement(By.partialLinkText(“Goo”)).click();

The above command find the element based on the substring of the link provided in the parenthesis and thus partialLinkText() finds the web element with the specified substring and then clicks on it.

An inline frame acronym as iframe is used to insert another document with in the current HTML document or simply a web page into a web page by enabling nesting.

Select iframe by id:

driver.switchTo().frame(“ID of the frame“);

//Locating iframe using tagName
driver.switchTo().frame(driver.findElements(By.tagName(“iframe”).get(0));


//Locating iframe using index

frame(index)
driver.switchTo().frame(0);


frame(Name of Frame)
driver.switchTo().frame(“name of the frame”);

findElement() is used to find the first element in the current web page matching to the specified locator value. Take a note that only first matching element would be fetched.

Syntax :

WebElement element = driver.findElements(By.xpath(“//div[@id=’example’]//ul//li”));

//Syntax:
List elementList = 
driver.findElements(By.xpath(“//div[@id=’example’]//ul//li”));

At times, we may come across elements of same type like multiple hyperlinks, images etc arranged in an ordered or unordered list. Thus, it makes absolute sense to deal with such elements by a single piece of code and this can be done using WebElement List.

Sample Code :

// Storing the list
List elementList = driver.findElements(By.xpath("//div[@id='example']//ul//li"));
// Fetching the size of the list
int listSize = elementList.size();
for (int i=0; i {
// Clicking on each service provider link
serviceProviderLinks.get(i).click();
// Navigating back to the previous page that stores link to service providers
driver.navigate().back();
}

close() : WebDriver’s close() method closes the web browser window that the user is currently working on or we can also say the window that is being currently accessed by the WebDriver. The command neither requires any parameter nor does is return any value.

quit() : Unlike close() method, quit() method closes down all the windows that the program has opened. Same as close() method, the command neither requires any parameter nor does is return any value.