Selenium WebDriver Tutorial

Categories: Selenium

The demand for automation of the testing process and solutions in order to provide a smooth customer service is boosting the entire automation testing industry. 

Automation testing allows users to shorten the feedback mechanism and provide faster testing for different stages in the product's lifecycle. Test automation is particularly beneficial since it aids in the early detection of problems or errors during the development process, hence increasing the efficiency of the team. 

Because of these numerous advantages, automation testing and its popular tools such as Selenium have been getting the hype and getting a selenium certificate is considered beneficial in the year 2022.  So, today let’s talk about one of the most interesting frameworks of Selenium automation which is the Selenium WebDriver in this tutorial.

Table of contents

• What is the Selenium WebDriver?
• What are Selenium WebDriver features?
• What is the Selenium WebDriver architecture?
• How does the Selenium WebDriver work?
• What are the advantages of Selenium WebDriver?
• What are the disadvantages of Selenium WebDriver?
• Conclusion

Let’s start this blog by knowing what exactly is Selenium WebDriver.

What is the Selenium WebDriver?

Selenium WebDriver is one of the most significant frameworks of Selenium Tool's Suite. It is an open source and a collection of automated testing tools built on the JavaScript framework. It could run the tests on the targeting browser, perform the interactions on the appropriate web page, and re-execute them without requiring any operator intervention. It determines whether the application works as intended or not. Selenium Testing Tutorial will help you learn everything you need to know about Selenium testing. 

What are Selenium WebDriver features?

The following are some of Selenium WebDriver's most essential features.

• Selenium WebDriver works with various browsers, including Firefox, Chrome, Internet Explorer, Opera, and others.
• WebDriver also supports Java, C#, JavaScript, PHP, Ruby, Pearl, and Python, among other programming languages.
• When compared to the other Selenium Suite products, WebDriver is the fastest.
• The majority of Selenium WebDriver instructions are simple to use.
• WebDriver has a number of options for dealing with some of the issues that might arise during automated testing.
• When it comes to cross-browser testing, Selenium WebDriver offers the most important benefit.
• Using frameworks like TestNG, Selenium WebDriver supports parallel execution.

What is the Selenium WebDriver architecture?

The four key components of the WebDriver Architecture are:

1. Selenium Client Libraries/ Selenium Language Bindings
2. JSON Wire Protocol
3. Browser Drivers
4. Real Browsers

Let’s get into detail of what exactly these components are in this section.

1. Selenium Client Libraries/ Selenium Language Bindings

Test engineers prefer to use languages with which they are familiar. Selenium supports a variety of libraries, including Ruby, Python, and Java. Hence, Any tester with a basic understanding of how to work with a programming language may obtain language bindings of their own choice and get started. This is how Selenium Architecture gives testers the freedom to automate in their own environment. 

1. JSON Wire Protocol

 The JSON Wire Protocol in the Selenium Architecture supports all Selenium interactions between the client and the code. This is Selenium's nucleus. The JSON Wire Protocol is a data communication medium that uses a RESTful (Representational State Transfer) API to offer a mass transmission and construct a RESTful web service that uses JSON over HTTP.

1. Browser Drivers

Because Selenium supports a variety of browsers, every browser has its own version of the World wide web consortium specification that Selenium delivers. As a result, browser-specific versions that are particular to the browser are accessible, hiding the execution logic from the user. The JSONWire interface creates a link across the client library and browser binary.

1. Real Browsers

Selenium can only execute testing on browsers that are deployed, either on the local workstation or on the physical servers. As a result, browser setup is required. Selenium WebDriver works with Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, and Safari.

How does the Selenium WebDriver work?

We saw Selenium's architecture in the earlier chapter. Let's have a look at how the Selenium WebDriver works. In a nutshell, Selenium WebDriver follows very few steps which are explained below.

• An HTTP request is generated and sent to the appropriate browser driver (Chrome, IE, Firefox). For every Selenium command, there is a separate request.
• An HTTP server sends the request to the browser driver.
• The Web server determines which activities the browser must perform.
• The browser follows the above-mentioned guidelines.
• The HTTP server then gets the status of the operation and passes it to an application code that displays the outcome.

What are the advantages of Selenium WebDriver?

Here are some advantages you must know about Selenium WebDriver.

• It is open source.
• It offers language support.
• It's compatible with a variety of operating systems.
• It can be used for testing the cross-browser compatibility.
• Multiple Frameworks and Languages are supported.
• Cross-Device Testing is available.
• Community Support is vast.
• Its implementation is simple.
• It can speed up the test cycles.

What are the disadvantages of Selenium WebDriver?

Selenium is a powerful tool for automating web application testing, however it is not without flaws. Let's have a peek at a few of its disadvantages.

• It necessitates programming expertise and knowledge.
• It solely supports web-based apps; no desktop programmes are supported.
• There is no one who can provide trustworthy technical support.
• Built-in object repository is not available.
• There isn't any built-in reporting.
• Managing Selenium-Browser Dependencies
• It's difficult to use, and creating test cases takes longer.
• Setting up a test environment is difficult.
• Image Testing has limited support.

Conclusion

Here comes the conclusion. Selenium has a vast and dynamic user community that can help you with anything. As a result, the instrument is extremely versatile and economical. Selenium remained the primary option for many testing projects, despite the availability of several technologies on the market. 

As a result, there is a growing market for Selenium Web Testers, which will only enhance significantly in the future. 

In this Selenium WebDriver tutorial, we have talked about the definition of Selenium WebDriver, its features, its architecture, and how it works. Along with that, we summarized this tutorial with advantages and disadvantages of Selenium WebDriver.