05 Sep 2019

• Automation Testing
  
• Selenium
  

Enterprises across industries are in a quest to achieve quality releases and at the same time require a faster time to market in order to withstand the present competitive market place. Quality applications and products are bound to deliver value to businesses and quality software is obtained only with effective software testing using test automation. Software test automation is the key to success in today’s agile and DevOps processes, as the test automation tools and frameworks deliver faster and quality releases due to accurate testing that is achieved with effective test scripts execution. Test automation tools are available as both open source tools and paid tools. Selenium tool is the most widely used open-source test automation tool. It is best suited for all web applications across browsers and delivers effective results for all tests and is an easy-to-use tool with numerous effective features.

Key Features of Selenium:

– Open source availability

– Multi-language support

– Multi-browser support

– Effective to test web applications

– Cross-browser support

Consists of a suite of tools such as Selenium IDE, Selenium RC, Selenium Web Driver, and Selenium Grid

Significance of Selenium Test Automation:

Selenium as a test automation tool is available as open-source and with its ease of use, it continues to be the most preferred for test automation. Primarily, it is used for automating web applications as it is quick and easy to use record and playback features. Additionally, the tests can be coded in multiple programming languages and executed across various web browsers and operating systems. Further, it supports to export the scripts that are recorded to other languages such as Java, C#, Python, Ruby, JavaScript, PHP. Interestingly, there are certain best practices that enterprises should adopt to leverage best results with selenium test automation.

An Overview of the 7 Best Practices to Follow to Achieve Effective Selenium Automation Testing:

1. Adopt Page Object Model (POM):

This is a popular test automation design pattern that helps to develop robust testing frameworks which are resistant to any small tweaks made in the user interface. The major benefit with this page object model is that it enhances test maintenance and reduces the duplication in code. In these models, the web pages are defined as classes and the different elements on the page become the variables and the user interactions are commonly implemented as methods. The POM frameworks are comparatively more reliable and are easy to maintain. The scripts are readable and the test scripts are reusable. It also eliminates duplicity altogether and hence POM is preferred over other models.

2. Adhere to the usage of Right Locators:

At the heart of selenium frameworks is interaction with the browser allowing to navigate, click, type, and check different objects. This all is achieved using different types of locators. These locators include Class, ID, Link Text, Xpath, CSS Selector and Tag Name. Thus, selecting the right locators is utmost important

3. Keep the Tests Independent of Each other:

Independent testing strategy wherein testing a single action or process is independent of the other. This type of testing avoids chained and brittle tests. Hence, tests should be kept as small as possible especially with agile and Continuous integration DevOps models on the go it is always suitable to maintain small tests.

4. Prefer to use Wait command in place of Thread. Sleep:

It is always preferred to use Wait command and it is more important to understand the usage of implicit wait and explicit wait instead of using the Sleep command. This Sleep command waits until the defined time even after the task is completed; while wait command performs the actual time to wait. Sleep command slows down the test while with the Wait, the test time is not affected.

5. Use Selenium for System Functional testing:

Selenium is best suited when the same test and the same code is used for different inputs. It is most preferred for system functional testing as well as for browser compatibility testing.

6. Prefer to Use Java Runtime Environment (JRE):

The Selenium server is programmed with Java and hence it is important to use latest version of JRE to avoid any run time errors.

7. Ensure proper communication between QA, Developers, and Operations teams:

With the agile and DevOps methodologies on the go, it is important to have proper collaboration between various teams of QA, developers and operations to achieve successful selenium testing.

Conclusion:

Enterprises should prefer Selenium as a promising test automation tool for automating all their web applications due to its enhanced features. Leverage our customized selenium test automation frameworks to achieve faster time to market and quicker ROI along with assured quality results. Connect with our testing experts today!