We can easily see the growth of the internet and browsers in our society. Every service is going online. The companies are using websites as their front card. A user can get on the respective website and get their work done using a website with much ease and comfort. To make this easier, organizations are developing featureful and interactive websites.
To make a well-functioning website, it is mandatory to perform browser testing to ensure their compatibility, functionality, etc. For website testing, Selenium is the most preferred tool. Selenium WebDriver is an integral tool that comes within the Selenium test suite. It helps make browser automation and your testing process efficient and productive. Selenium WebDriver allows developers to write code in various programming languages, such as Java, Python, or C#, enabling them to automate web browsers like Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and IE.
In this article, you will see what Selenium WebDriver is and how to install it, and then you will see how Selenium WebDriver simplifies browser automation.
What is Selenium WebDriver?
Selenium WebDriver was developed by Paul Hammant in 2006. Selenium WebDriver was the first framework that could configure and control the browsers on the operating system level. It was open-source and easy to use, making it very popular for website automation testing.
Selenium WebDriver acts on the web elements. Selenium WebDriver supports various programming languages: Java, Python, PHP, C#, etc. You can also integrate it with other testing and cloud-based tools like LambdaTest to make your browser automation testing process much easier and more efficient.
LambdaTest is an AI-powered test orchestration and execution platform to run manual and automated tests at scale. The platform allows you to perform real-time and automation testing on a remote test lab of 3000+ environments and real mobile devices.
LambdaTest enables users to perform real-time testing by allowing manual interaction with applications and websites. This feature is valuable for exploratory testing, debugging, and ensuring consistent user interface behavior across different environments. LambdaTest supports automated testing by allowing users to script and execute test scenarios. This capability significantly speeds up test execution while ensuring reliability, especially for repetitive tasks like regression testing.
Selenium WebDriver provides a wide range of commands that are used for the automation of web applications. This robust tool helps the developers and QA teams interact with web pages more efficiently and securely. By using the WebDriver API, developers can access and control web elements on a page, which allows them to write and design automated tests easily.
Key Features of Selenium WebDriver
Selenium WebDriver has many benefits and advantages for performing automation testing for websites and web applications. In this section, you will see the components combined to make the Selenium WebDriver and how they simplify browser automation testing.
- WebDriver API
The WebDriver API aims to provide a synchronous API that can be used for various use cases, though it is primarily designed to support automated testing of web apps. This API benefits browser automation by providing an interface that can be used to control the browsers, fill the forms, verify the page content, etc. Also, WeDriver API provides an interface where the user can write test scripts that can run from CLI (Command Line Interface) or other integrated tools.
- Cross-Browser Support
Selenium WebDriver simplifies many types of browsers for browser automation testing. It allows the developers and QA team to perform automation testing for various popular and most-used web browsers such as Google Chrome, Firefox, Safari, etc., making it very versatile and ensuring that applications are compatible across all platforms and devices. This is a very major benefit of using Selenium WebDriver for browser automation.
- Tool Integration
Selenium WebDriver simplifies browser automation by providing various integration with other testing tools and frameworks. You can integrate Selenium WebDriver with Appium in case of mobile app testing. You can integrate with Jenkins CI/CD pipelines, etc. All these powerful integration options provided by the Selenium WebDriver are a great benefit of using it for browser automation.
- Language Support
The multi-language support benefits of Selenium WebDriver make this tool a very popular choice among the testing team for browser automation. Selenium supports various programming languages: C #, Python, JavaScript, Ruby, and Pearl. Whenever we want to choose an automation testing tool, the first question that pops into your mind is about language support. Is that specific tool compatible with our known programming language or not? Selenium eliminates this kind of issue as you have to write a testing script in your language, and the rest of the work will be done by the Selenium tool itself.
- Parallel Testing and Grid Distribution
Selenium WebDriver provides a very beneficial interface for the browser automation team by using the concept of parallel testing. Parallel testing allows you to run multiple tests simultaneously on various platforms and virtual machines. Parallel testing and grid distribution allow you to perform browser automation in less time. The tasks get divided into chunks, and you can perform separate tests for them, providing the combined testing result for your browser automation.
Installation and Setup Process of Selenium WebDriver
- Conversion Test Command into HTTP Request using JSON Wire Protocol
For every test script written by the QA team using the Selenium WebDriver, all the tests get converted into an HTTP request. It is done by using the JSON wire protocol. The JSON wire protocol (JSONWP) is a transport mechanism created by WebDriver developers. This wire protocol is a specific set of predefined, standardized endpoints exposed via a RESTful API. This protocol establishes a smooth communication between the test script and WebDriver. Given below is an example code to understand how opening a URL is converted into an HTTP request.
driver.get(“https://example.com”);
- Initializing Browser Driver
Before starting the execution of test cases, it is mandatory to initialize the correct web browser driver. All web browsers have their specific driver that is used to make a bridge between the browser and test commands that you use for automation testing. Below is an example of initializing the ChromeDriver for the Google Chrome browser.
WebDriver driver = new ChromeDriver();
- Executing Test Commands
When you initialize the browser device, as discussed above, a server gets started that is used to listen to the HTTP requests sent by the testing team by the test scripts. When the browser receives these HTTP requests through browser drivers, it executes the appropriate actions according to the action done. For example, when you provide a test script written to click a button on the web page, the Selenium WebDriver locates that specific button over the web page. Then, it executes the click button accordingly. Below is an example that shows the execution of test commands by browser through drivers.
WebElement button = driver.findElement(By.id(“myButton”));
button.click();
How Selenium Webdriver Simplifies Browser Automation
Let us see the various factors showing how Selenium WebDriver simplifies browser automation.
- Easy Debugging
Debugging is a very important phase in browser automation. Debugging helps the testing team identify failures and understand the control flow in our automation test code. It is a very effective way to understand the execution flow. Debugging also helps to understand the failures and find the root cause so the team can effectively rectify them. Using the Selenium WebDriver, users can take screenshots of the browser and analyze them using automated tools to make a comparison and make their website visually effective and functional.
- Improved User Experience
User experience is a prime factor in your web browsers. That factor makes the user make that browser their default or just skip that web browser. If the users do not get a good and easy user interface for their website, it will lead to degrading the website user base. So, providing a good user experience can be done by running automated tests regularly with Selenium WebDriver, and the developers can make sure that user experience remains consistent across all platforms.
- Cost Savings
The cost of browser automation is one of the pillars that decides whether your browser automation testing is beneficial. Suppose your browser has very few functional components, and you pay a lot of money to test them. It will not be considered as a beneficial decision. With the help of Selenium WebDriver, you can perform browser automation with less cost, much more efficiency, and a great testing output.
- Cross-Platform Compatibility
Selenium WebDriver supports a huge number of programming languages. Apart from that, it also supports many platforms for making your browser automation testing simple and easy. The Developers and testing team can choose their preferred programming language to write the test scripts using Selenium WebDriver. Also, you can perform this browser automation using Selenium WebDriver on any OS such as Windows, macOS, or Linux. This makes switching between different machines or cloud services easy without rewriting tests.
- Increased Testing Efficiency
After using all the best testing tools and frameworks with best practices for your browser automation, testing efficiency is one of the main factors the team seeks. Testing efficiency is defined as the overall outcome of the browser automation and the overall testing output of the whole web testing process. Whether you have browser testing up to the client requirement or not. So, Selenium WebDriver simplifies browser automation and provides very good efficiency compared to similar website testing tools.
Conclusion
Selenium WebDriver is an internal part of the Selenium testing suite that allows you to execute cross-browser tests. This tool automates web-based application testing to verify that it performs expectedly. It was developed in 2006 by Paul Hammant. Selenium WebDriver is used to make your browser automation easy and productive. It has various benefits, such as being cheap compared to similar browser automation tools. Selenium WebDriver can be integrated with Appium in case of mobile app testing.
You can integrate with Jenkins CI/CD pipelines to add extra performance for the automated browser testing. Selenium supports various programming languages: C #, Python, JavaScript, Ruby, and Pearl. Selenium WebDriver also supports parallel testing. It allows us to perform numerous tasks simultaneously on different resources and get the combined result, which is time-saving. These are the various benefits and advantages of Selenium WebDriver, and they show how Selenium WebDrive simplifies browser automation.
