Selenium Tutorial

Selenium is a widely adopted open-source automation testing framework that is designed to help users test web applications across various browsers and platforms. Selenium is not just a single tool but a set of tools that helps testers to automate web-based applications more efficiently. This comprehensive tutorial will help you gain an in-depth understanding of Selenium and how to use it to streamline your testing processes.

Components of Selenium

In this tutorial, you will find a detailed description on the following four tools that form the Selenium suite −

• Selenium IDE − Selenium Integrated Development Environment (IDE) is a Firefox plugin that lets testers to record their actions as they follow the workflow that they need to test. It allows users to create test scripts without having to write codes manually. Although it offers a quick start, Selenium IDE is not usually recommended for testing complex scenarios.

• Selenium RC − Selenium Remote Control (RC) was the flagship testing framework that allowed more than simple browser actions and linear execution. It can help you use the full power of programming languages such as Java, C#, PHP, Python, Ruby and PERL to create more complex tests.

• Selenium WebDriver − Selenium WebDriver is the successor to Selenium RC which sends commands directly to the browser and retrieves results. WebDriver is meant for automating browser interactions. It provides a simple API for controlling the browsers and help users interact with web elements.

• Selenium Grid − Selenium Grid is meant for executing parallel tests across multiple machines. Due to the distribution of test execution across different environments, it can greatly minimize the testing time.

Key Features of Selenium

Here are some of the prominent features of Selenium that makes it so popular among testers and developers alike −

• Cross-browser Compatibility − You can use Selenium to execute tests on different browsers including Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and Internet Explorer. This ensures that your web application performs consistently across multiple platforms.

• Platform Independence − Selenium is not bound to any specific operating system. It can run on Windows, macOS, and Linux. Due to this platform independence, Selenium is the preferred choice for testing diverse applications.

• Support for Multiple Programming Languages − Selenium supports multiple programming languages including Java, Python, C#, Ruby, and JavaScript. This flexibility allows testers and developers to choose a language they are comfortable with.

• Extensibility − Selenium has features to enable users to incorporate additional functionalities through several plugins or extensions. One can easily customize Selenium to suit specific testing requirements.

A Sample Test Script Using Selenium WebDriver

Getting started with Selenium involves setting up the development environment, selecting the best fit programming language as per your expertise, and configuring the Selenium WebDriver. This tutorial will guide you through each step, providing hands-on examples wherever necessary.

Here's an example test case written in Python using Selenium WebDriver where we will open a web browser (Chrome), navigate to a website (www.tutorialspoint.com), get its title and print it on the console.

Example

Before you begin, make sure you have Python installed on your system along with the Selenium WebDriver library.

from selenium import webdriver

def first_test_script():
   # Create an instance of the Chrome WebDriver
   # you can use other browsers too
   driver = webdriver.Chrome()

   # navigate to the website
   driver.get("https://www.tutorialspoint.com")

   # Get the actual title of the page
   title = driver.title

   # Print the title of the website
   print("Title: " + title)
    
   # Close the browser window
   driver.quit()

if __name__ == "__main__":
   first_test_script()

Save the script to a file (e.g., selenium_example.py) and run it using −

python selenium_example.py

Output

We got the following output from this Python code −

Title: Online Tutorials, Courses, and eBooks Library | Tutorialspoint

Audience

This tutorial is designed for software testing professionals who would like to learn the basics of Selenium through practical examples. The tutorial contains enough ingredients to get you started with Selenium from where you can take yourself to higher levels of expertise.

Prerequisites

Before proceeding with this tutorial, you should have a basic understanding of Java or any other object-oriented programming language. In addition, you should be well-versed with the fundamentals of testing concepts.