How To Use Selenium Webdriver

Selenium WebDriver is i of the most important parts of the Selenium test suite family unit. But before exploring Selenium WebDriver, let's brainstorm with a few basics nigh Selenium.

What is Selenium?

Selenium refers to a suite of tools that are widely used in the testing community when it comes to cross-browser testing. Selenium cannot automate desktop applications; it can merely exist used in browsers. It is considered to exist one of the most preferred tool suites for automation testing of web applications as it provides support for popular web browsers which makes it very powerful.

It supports a number of browsers (Google Chrome 12+, Internet Explorer 7,eight,9,x, Safari five.1+, Opera 11.5, Firefox 3+) and operating systems (Windows, Mac, Linux/Unix).

Selenium also provides compatibility with unlike programming languages – C#, Java, JavaScript, Carmine, Python, PHP. Testers tin can choose which language to pattern examination cases in, thus making Selenium highly favorable for its flexibility.

Annotation: Information technology is not mandatory to write Selenium code in the same linguistic communication as the application. For case, if the application under examination is written in PHP, so testers don't take to write Selenium code in PHP. Thus, if a website is written in C#, the Selenium lawmaking can exist written in PHP as well.

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Selenium Components

The Selenium test suite comprises four main components:-

Selenium IDE

Selenium IDE (Integrated Development Environment) is primarily a record/run tool. It is an Add-on or an extension available for both Firefox and Chrome that generates tests quickly through its functionality of record and playback. Y'all don't demand to learn any examination scripting language for authoring whatsoever functional tests.

Selenium RC

In the case of working with Selenium RC (Remote Control), 1 must have expert cognition of at to the lowest degree one programming language. This tool allows you to develop responsive design tests in any scripting language of your choice. Server and client libraries are the two chief components of Selenium RC. Its compages is circuitous and information technology has its limitations.

Selenium Webdriver

Selenium WebDriver is an enhanced version of Selenium RC. It was introduced in the market place to overcome the limitation faced in Selenium RC. Though information technology is an avant-garde version of RC, its architecture is completely different from that of RC. Just like Selenium RC, Selenium WebDriver also supports multiple programming platforms to provide wider flexibility and requires knowing any one programming language.

Selenium Grid

Selenium Grid is a tool that is used for concurrent execution of test cases on different browsers, machines, and operating systems simultaneously. This tool makes Cross-browser compatibility testing very easy. There are two versions of the Selenium Grid – the older version is known every bit Grid ane and the recent version is known as Filigree 2.

Now let's move on to the tutorial on Selenium WebDriver .

What is Selenium WebDriver?

Selenium WebDriver is a web framework that permits you to execute cantankerous-browser tests. This tool is used for automating spider web-based awarding testing to verify that it performs expectedly.

Selenium WebDriver allows yous to choose a programming language to create test scripts. Every bit discussed earlier, it is an advancement over Selenium RC to overcome a few limitations. Selenium WebDriver is not capable of handling window components, but this drawback tin exist overcome by using tools like Sikuli, Auto IT, etc.

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Now let'southward try to understand the WebDriver Architecture.

Selenium WebDriver Framework Compages

WebDriver Architecture is made upward of four major components:

Selenium Customer library
JSON wire protocol over HTTP
Browser Drivers
Browsers

Selenium Webdriver Framework Architecture

Selenium Client Libraries/Language Bindings

Selenium provides support to multiple libraries such equally Ruby, Python, Java, etc equally linguistic communication bindings accept been adult by Selenium developers to provide compatibility for multiple languages. For example, if y'all want to use the browser driver in Python, use the Python Bindings. You tin can download all the supported linguistic communication bindings of your choice from the official site of Selenium.

JSON Wire Protocol

JSON is an acronym for JavaScript Object Note. It is an open standard that provides a transport mechanism for transferring data between customer and server on the spider web. It provides support for various data structures similar arrays and objects which makes information technology easier to read and write data from JSON.

JSON serves every bit a REST (Representational State Transfer) API that exchanges information between HTTP servers. Learn more than almost Remainder API for accessing Selenium

Browser Drivers

Selenium provides drivers specific to each browser and without revealing the internal logic of browser functionality, the browser driver interacts with the respective browser by establishing a secure connectedness. These browser drivers are also specific to the language which is used for test instance automation similar C#, Python, Java, etc.

You can download the browser driver of your choice every bit per your linguistic communication requirements. For example, you can configure Selenium Spider web driver for Python on BrowserStack.

When a exam script is executed with the aid of WebDriver, the post-obit tasks are performed in the groundwork:

An HTTP asking is generated and it is delivered to the browser driver for every Selenium Command
The HTTP request is received by the driver through an HTTP server
All the steps/instructions to exist executed on the browser is decided by an HTTP server
The HTTP server then receives the execution status and in turn sends it back to the automation scripts

Browsers

As discussed before, Selenium provides support for multiple browsers like Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Internet Explorer etc.

Curious about Selenium 4? Try this in-depth webinar on Selenium four past Simon Stewart, the Selenium Project's pb, the creator of WebDriver, and the co-editor of the W3C WebDriver specification.

Basic Steps in a Selenium WebDriver Script

Create a WebDriver case.
Navigate to a webpage.
Locate a web chemical element on the webpage via locators in selenium.
Perform 1 or more user actions on the element.
Preload the expected output/browser response to the activeness.
Run test.
Tape results and compare results from them to the expected output.

In order to run tests, i must be familiar with the Basic Commands in Selenium WebDriver.

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Benefits of Selenium WebDriver

It is one of the near popular Open-Source tools and is easy to go started with for testing spider web-based applications. Information technology too allows you to perform cantankerous browser compatibility testing.
Supports multiple operating systems like Windows, Mac, Linux, Unix, etc.
It provides compatibility with a range of languages including Python, Java, Perl, Ruby, etc.
Provides support for mod browsers similar Chrome, Firefox, Opera, Safari, and Internet Explorer.
Selenium WebDriver completes the execution of test scripts faster when compared to other tools
More Concise API (Application Programming interface) than Selenium RC'south
Information technology besides provides compatibility with iPhoneDriver, HtmlUnitDriver, and AndroidDriver

Selenium Webdriver Browser Compatibility

Limitations of WebDriver

Support for new browsers is non readily available when compared to Selenium RC
For the automated generation of exam results, it doesn't take a born command

How Selenium WebDriver Works

On a high-level, Selenium WebDriver works in three steps:

Examination commands are converted into an HTTP request by the JSON wire protocol.
Before executing any examination cases, every browser has its own driver which initializes the server.
The browser then starts receiving the request through its driver.

Let's take an instance with the code snippet below:

WebDriver commuter = new ChromeDriver (); commuter. go (https://www.browserstack.com)

Every bit soon as you consummate writing your lawmaking, execute the programme. The above lawmaking will result in the launching of the Chrome browser which will navigate to the BrowserStack website.

Now let united states empathize what goes behind the scene when you click on Run until the launching of the Chrome Browser.

In one case the program is executed, every line of code/script volition get transformed into a URL. The JSON Wire protocol over HTTP makes this possible. Then this URL is passed to the browser drivers (in our example, the ChromeDriver). At this point, our customer library (Python in our example) translates the code into JSON format and interacts with the ChromeDriver.

The URL after JSON conversion looks every bit follows:

https://localhost:8080/{"url":https://www.browserstack.com"}

To receive the HTTP requests, every Browser Driver uses an HTTP server. Once the browser driver receives the URL, it processes the request past passing information technology to the existent browser over HTTP. And then all your commands in the Selenium scripts volition be executed.

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Types of Requests

There are two types of requests you might be familiar with – Go and POST.

If it'south a GET request then it results in a response that will exist generated at the browser end and it volition exist sent over HTTP to the browser commuter and eventually, the browser driver with the help of JSON wire protocol sends it to the UI (Eclipse IDE).

How to use Selenium WebDriver: Example

The code below automates the login part on the BrowserStack Sign-in page in Chrome:

          import                      org          .          openqa          .          selenium          .          By          ;          import                      org          .          openqa          .          selenium          .          WebDriver          ;          import                      org          .          openqa          .          selenium          .          WebElement          ;          import                      org          .          openqa          .          selenium          .          chrome          .          ChromeDriver          ;          import                      org          .          testng          .          Affirm          ;          import                      org          .          testng          .          annotations          .          Test          ;          public          class          LoginAutomation          {          @Test          public          void                      login          ()          {          Arrangement          .          setProperty          (          "webdriver.chrome.driver"          ,          "path of driver"          );          WebDriver                      commuter          =          new          ChromeDriver          ();                      commuter          .          manage          ().          window          ().          maximize          ();                      driver          .          get          (          "https://www.browserstack.com/users/sign_in"          );          WebElement                      username          =          driver          .          findElement          (          Past          .          id          (          "user_email_Login"          ));          WebElement                      password          =          driver          .          findElement          (          By          .          id          (          "user_password"          ));          WebElement                      login          =          driver          .          findElement          (          By          .          name          (          "commit"          ));                      username          .          sendKeys          (          "abc@gmail.com"          );                      password          .          sendKeys          (          "your_password"          );                      login          .          click          ();          Cord                      actualUrl          =          "https://live.browserstack.com/dashboard"          ;          String                      expectedUrl          =                      driver          .          getCurrentUrl          ();          Affirm          .          assertEquals          (          expectedUrl          ,          actualUrl          );          }          }

The code above does the following:

Create a Selenium WebDriver example
Configure browser if required
Navigate to the required web folio and locate the relevant web chemical element
Perform action on the web chemical element
Verify and validate the action

On executing the lawmaking, Selenium will navigate to the Chrome browser and open the Browserstack login page. Then, it will log in using the relevant credentials. It will also check the examination case status using Assert and attempt to match the URL.

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This tutorial is meant to initiate new users to the many functions and uses of Selenium WebDriver. After studying the nuts, explore many of the Selenium tutorials on the BrowserStack Guide in order to explore and sympathise how Selenium WebDriver is one of the virtually powerful resources in a tester's toolkit.