With Selenium, website testers around the world are able to automate website testing with ease. A Selenium framework component known as WebDriver makes it possible to automate cross browser testing of websites and web applications across a variety of browsers, such as Google Chrome, Safari, Opera, Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, and Microsoft Edge.
Testing with Selenium Webdriver is generally easier than with other web automation tools/frameworks because the tool supports several programming languages. This incorporates Python, Ruby, PHP, Java, C#, JavaScript, .Net, and Perl, among others.
This blog will focus on some quick tips to optimise your testing process using Selenium WebDriver. Let us now get started.
How does Selenium Webdriver work?
For testing web applications, Selenium Webdriver offers powerful automation. It is an open-source library packed with a broad array of features. Testing a website with it is as easy as simulating a user’s actions. All of these features make it an ideal automation tool. Getting the most out of Selenium Webdriver requires proper guidance.
You can optimize code with the tips mentioned in this blog, improve quality, and provide robust automation solutions with Selenium Webdriver. In addition to this, Selenium Webdriver supports many programming languages, including Java, Python, C#, and Ruby. However, you can modify them to any language you like.
Benefits of Selenium WebDriver
First, let us now have a look at some of the major advantages that Selenium WebDriiver offers to its users.
● Due to its open source nature, Selenium Automation with Java has a number of benefits. The benefit of being open source is that it can be used free of charge by anyone.
● If you are one of those testers who wonders if they have to learn Selenium-centric languages, you can sigh with relief, because Selenium is compatible with all of these popular languages. With Selenium, you can write scripts in any of these preferred programming languages and Selenium will translate them into compatible code. In addition to this, Selenium also supports frameworks for these languages. It doesn’t matter what language or framework you use when you use Selenium for automation testing.
● In order to communicate seamlessly with web applications and web elements, Selenium WebDriver with Java is an excellent choice. There is no need to rewrite the Selenium script for all browsers. It works on Safari, Firefox, Chrome, Internet Explorer, and even Opera.
● In some cases, people use Windows, while others prefer Linux, and others prefer Mac OS. You must now be thinking that is Selenium WebDriver with Java compatible with such a wide range of operating systems? Yes, it is, since it has a high degree of flexibility and can run on UNIX, Windows, Linux, Mac OS, etc. Your Selenium Test Suite will work fine regardless of which operating system you used. As a result, developers and testers do not need to worry about operating systems when accessing this feature.
● One of the major benefits of Selenium Automation with Java is that it supports multiple devices, allowing for applications to be written that test Android phones, Blackberry phones, and even iPhones. This feature helps address cross-device issues impeccably.
● You can easily grasp Selenium scripts, as they do not involve lengthy algorithms and are not complex at all. Instead, they contain very few codes to automate your website’s functions. Additionally, Selenium has extensive documentation available on their website, as well as a huge community to draw on for assistance.
● You can always count on Selenium’s community support, which is readily available with a large range of resources and is released on a regular basis with important updates. The most versatile thing about these updates is that they are readily available, and you don’t need the training to learn everything about them. Further, you can ask anything and everything or conduct brainstorming sessions for productive outcomes in the community.
● The Selenium WebDriver excels in every parameter when it comes to overall performance. Compared with the other Selenium tools, this one is faster and much better. Additionally, it does not require any transitional servers to communicate with the browser, allowing it to be more flexible.
● The main advantage of Selenium WebDriver is its ease of implementation. The user interface is straightforward, making it easy to build and run test scripts. And you can see the tests as they run, allowing you to analyze them and take action accordingly.
● Managing tests is an integral part of the testing lifecycle. Among Selenium WebDriver with Java’s many benefits is that it enables developers and testers to modify the code quickly and effectively. In addition, it minimizes duplication and other problems, helping to maintain a high level of quality. Compared to other automation testing tools, Selenium becomes more operational with these advantages by your side.
10 Quick Tips About Selenium WebDriver
This section of the blog will magnify on quick tips that can help you benefit the most with Selenium WebDriver.
1. Using the same parameters to launch multiple tests
Use TestNG configuration to define specific parameters for a test suite. This is useful in cases where the same values are used across a variety of tests.
2. Java WebDriver is used to perform mouseover functions.
Often, you will see a drop-down menu to show new options when you move the mouse over it. Webdriver provides an Actions class for handling mouse events. We can simulate mouse hover by chaining all actions together.
3. A test that passes simple values
DataProvider offers a two-dimensional array of objects, which can be used to process data sets.
● Test launches are defined by the first array dimension.
● There are two dimensions in the second dimension, which are the number of tests and the types of tests.
4. Consider close() and quit() methods
To close a web browser instance in WebDriver, there are two options.
a) close(): We can say that the close() method of the WebDriver closes the web browser window being accessed by the WebDriver at the moment. This method does not return a value and does not accept any parameters.
b) quit(): As with close() method, quit() closes down all the windows the program has opened. However, as with close() method, quit() does not require any parameters nor does it return any results.
5. Window pop-ups should be handled with care
One of the most common challenges in Selenium web automation is dealing with pop-up windows. There are three common types of pop-up windows:
● Displays a message in the form of a simple alert
● An alert requesting confirmation of a particular action is sent to the user
● User prompts: warns them that they need to provide some data
In WebDriver, a pop-up can be managed using the switch_to method. Windows-based alerts cannot be handled by WebDriver, however web-based alerts can be handled through the switch_to method.
6. Handling the Dynamic Content
AJAX-based apps are mostly the most common type of dynamic content on websites today. An e-commerce site is a typical example of this, since they often display different products to different users according to their location and previous product choices. WebDriver should continue testing when a page’s content is fully loaded when testing a site like this.
If an element has not yet been inserted into the DOM when it loads on dynamic pages, issues may occur. However, Selenium wait commands can solve this problem quite effectively. If a particular condition needs to be met, use Explicit Wait along with the thread.sleep() function to pause test execution until the condition has been met,
7. Using Selenium Webdriver to close tabs without closing the browser
Having a clear understanding of how to close tabs without closing the entire browser is one of the most basic yet mandatory tips for Selenium test automation scripts. The driver.close() method closes the focus tab, while the driver.quit() method closes all the tabs (of the browser). When you want the browser window open (and all other tabs closed), use the switch_to.window method. This method has the input parameter window handle-id.
8. The handling of iframes
It is possible to deal with several frames within a window while automating web applications, so
the test script developer may have to switch between frames or iframes. By enabling nesting, an inline frame allows a web page to be embedded within another web page, or a document to be inserted within the current document.
9. In Webdriver, set the executable path for the driver.
Depending on the browser, Webdriver needs to know where the driver files are located. For example, Chrome and IE require a driver file path to be set in the configuration file.
10. Check the ChromeDriver file you downloaded
By setting download.default_directory, the current Chrome instance’s default download directory can be changed. Using WebDriverWait, we wait for the file to exist on the file system when initiating the download. In the last step, we assert the file size and surround the entire code with a try-finally block. We delete the downloaded file in the try-finally block to ensure consistency in our tests.
Conclusion
The majority of Selenium tips we covered will help you automate your test tests with Selenium WebDriver like a pro. The extent of testing will be limited since you are unable to cover the entire spectrum of devices + operating systems + browsers (& browser versions) on your local machine. Even though you can test your website/webapp on a variety of browsers and operating systems, you must remember that you will be limited. Here’s where these tips & tricks will help you automate your cross browser testing for your website/web app. In such a case, use LambdaTest’s Selenium Grid on-cloud to automate cross-browser testing instead of building a local test infrastructure.
If you want to expand your test coverage by testing your application on more than 3000 real browsers + OS + devices combinations, you can move your local Selenium automation test code to LambdaTest Selenium with minimal changes. Furthermore, LambdaTest integrates with a wide range of tools for continuous integration, continuous delivery and project management. You can easily check out all of our integrations on their official website.
The Selenium test automation process can be challenging, but with the actionable insights, rather practical tips listed above, you will be proficient in Selenium WebDriver test automation.
