What is Selenium? Selenium Automation Testing Overview

01.07.22 03:28 AM By Aishwarya

Understanding the Selenium Test Automation Tool



What is Software Testing?
Testing may be defined as examining or assessing the quality, reliability, or performance of a product before releasing it for general use. For example, most things, from a little pin to a spaceship, are tested before they are released.

Today's technology is dominated by software-powered equipment and apps. We want things to work exactly how we want them to every time and everywhere. Are we certain they will work? The solution is found in software testing. Software testing is the investigation or verification of the quality of software programmes prior to their distribution to the user. Because most organisations nowadays are internet or web-based, the same testing applies to online apps as well. So, why should we test web applications?

Consider the following scenario: you place an order online but are unable to trace the progress of your purchase. This might be due to a flaw or error in the backend code of the web application. As a result, testing the code is required to avoid such problems or mistakes. Selenium is a tool for testing web applications.

What is Selenium?
Selenium is now widely used by software testers and developers as an open-source portable automated testing platform. It offers the ability to automate browsers by using specialised browser bindings for testing web applications.

What is the importance of Selenium Testing?
Have you ever considered why testing is so important in the software development lifecycle? Have you ever heard of testing automation? If you answered yes, you may be familiar with Selenium. Selenium is seen as an alternative to automation testing. If not, you should go through this full essay to grasp the significance of Selenium in the IT industry. This can significantly advance your career and place you on the map of the IT business.
Software testing is a vital factory for the proper operation of a software product. It must be properly tested before being delivered to consumers in order for the software product to work well. Despite the fact that every software on the market has been thoroughly tested, it has flaws. It is critical to deliver software free of flaws, and all test engineers strive to identify them prior to product release to avoid future problems. Because of its numerous benefits, automation testing has grown in popularity. It improves the software's efficacy and efficiency.
Because of its numerous advantages, Selenium is one of the most extensively used automated testing technologies. Selenium is preferred by testers over other tools because to its ease of use, availability, and simplicity. The introduction of Selenium for automated testing has made life easier for testers. It has drawn a lot of attention and has become a favoured tool among automation testers.

What Is the Selenium Testing Tool Used For?
The Selenium testing tool is used to automate web application tests across browsers. It is used to assure high-quality online applications, whether responsive, progressive, or consistent.
Selenium is a free and open source utility. Furthermore, Selenium is routinely released. Selenium is used by testers because it is simple to create test scripts to validate functionality. It's also dependable.

How does the Selenium testing tool work?
Setting up a Selenium test environment, inspecting items, locating elements in Selenium, using Selenium WebDriver methods, and developing Selenium test cases are all part of the process.

Selenium automates browsers, particularly for the purpose of testing web applications. Boring web-based administration duties can also be automated.
> Selenium is used to test the functionality and regression of web applications.
> Selenium is a collection of test tools, not a single tool, however Selenium WebDriver is a strong component in this suite that enables test design and execution.
> To do testing, Selenium (WebDriver) supports a variety of operating systems, computer languages, and browsers.
> Batch testing, cross-browser testing, data-driven testing, and database testing are all supported by Selenium.

Selenium Testing explained by Mayank Bhola, Co-Founder & Head of Product at LambdaTest

What is the Selenium Framework? And How Do I Begin Using Selenium?
Selenium Framework is a portable set of tools for automating web application testing. Selenium, one of the most well-known and widely available platforms, is interoperable with all major browsers and operating systems. Selenium is an open-source web testing framework that is presently in beta version 4.0. The suite does not consist of a single framework. Rather, it may be expanded into a variety of frameworks. It provides a wide range of tools and customizations, making it the ideal automated testing framework for a wide range of use cases.

Consider the following scenario for a manual tester: determining whether the web app's signup page (www.example.com/signup) validates input strings and properly registers a user in the newest versions of Chrome and Firefox on Windows 7.

Why do you need Selenium Testing?
Assume the signup page has the following input fields: username, email address, and password. The tester will be given a Windows 7 desktop and will proceed through the following procedures on the most recent versions of Chrome and Firefox:

> In the address box, type the URL (www.example.com/signup).
> Fill each each input field with an incorrect string (email, username, and password)
> Check to see if the input texts were checked against relevant regexes and any previously stored values in the database.
> Fill in the 'valid' texts in each input field; then click. Register
> Check to see if the "Welcome, "username"" page appeared.
> Check to see if the system database generated a new userID for"username."
> Mark the test as 'failed' if the signup functionality broke at any point throughout the test.

That is a pretty simple system test. In the actual world, testers are more likely to examine all user processes on www.example.com for broken links, on as many OS-browser combinations as are required to achieve benchmarked compatibility criteria.

It might take anything from hours to weeks to ensure that the web app is completely working, depending on the number of human testers (and the quality of the test cases). Modern developers and product teams may not have that amount of time to devote to testing, but they also cannot devote that much time to rigorous testing.

Can Selenium Be Used To Automate APIs?
Selenium is intended to automate an application's front end. It is NOT intended to automate API testing. I've seen numerous postings on this topic where writers demonstrate how they automated APIs with Selenium. They conduct API automation with RestAssured or Apache HTTP Client (both for Java). You are not performing API automation with Selenium. You are doing so by expanding your framework. API testing using these modules is intended to automate APIs in the same way that Selenium automates the front end. Yes, if Selenium allows you to automate API calls without relying on third-party libraries. Selenium automates API testing. However, Selenium is currently only used on the front end.

Have you ever used Selenium? What do you think about the tool? And if you want to explore in-depth Selenium testing explore our Notabletalks with the industry leader in Testing Automation Mayank Bhola, Co-Founder & Head of Product at LambdaTest 

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