What is selenium and how does it work

After your team of developers has spent countless hours developing the latest web application for your company, you're probably eager to deploy that application. After all, customers and consumers can benefit from this brilliant web app until it becomes available.

However, this app must first undergo rigorous testing before being released to the public. Skip this step and disaster could strike when the application doesn't work or (worse) a vulnerability makes it possible to steal sensitive data from your network or your customer's devices.

This is not a reality you want to have to deal with.

To avoid such an outcome, you need to hire a team with the specific task of testing the apps you plan to sell or give away. This testing phase should be considered an absolute necessity. This does not mean, however, that you will have to spend weeks testing, which would only delay the launch.

Instead, you can take advantage of the many automated testing tools available. One such tool is Selenium , which was created for automated testing of web applications. This open source automated testing framework is used to validate web applications across multiple browsers and platforms. So, instead of manually testing your web application on every browser running on every operating system (which can be time-consuming), you can employ this framework to do the heavy lifting.

Selenium was created by ThoughtWorks engineer Jason Higgins in 2004. Higgins was working on a web application that required frequent testing and realized he could write a JavaScript application that would automatically control the browser's actions to make the testing phase a little easier. efficient. This script was called JavaScriptTestRunner. Higgins opened JavaScriptTestRunner and eventually renamed it Selenium Core.

How selenium works

It is important to understand that Selenium is just a framework. It is not an application that allows you to upload your application and automatically test it on various browser/OS combinations. Instead, Selenium allows you to use languages ​​like Java, C#, and Python to create Selenium test scripts.

In fact, Selenium is not just one tool, but a collection of 4 tools:

• Selenium Integrated Development Environment A Firefox extension that automates the browser through a series of record and replay events to make testing faster.
• Selenium Remote Control A server that acts as an HTTP proxy to trick a browser into thinking that Selenium RC supports Java, C#, PHP, Python, Perl and Ruby.
• WebDriver Makes it possible to control the web browser at the operating system level.
• Selenium Grid Captures browser screenshots during different testing stages and sends Selenium commands to different machines.

Eventually, Selenium 2 was released, with WebDriver serving as the core. WebDriver now consists of the API (which carries scripts for the Selenium scripting language), a library (which houses the API and language-specific bindings), a driver (which opens a browser instance and runs the test script), and a framework (which includes support for integration with various programming languages).

Selenium WebDriver works like this:

The WebDriver protocol sends test script commands to a specific browser driver.

The driver executes the commands in a specific browser instance (such as Chrome or Firefox).

Benefits of using selenium

The benefits of using a tool like Selenium should be obvious, as the tool makes it possible to automate what would normally be manual, repetitive and time-consuming testing of web applications. Instead, you write your test scripts and, using Selenium tools, automate testing across multiple combinations of browsers and operating systems.

This will not only save time but also money. You'll be able to ship your web application faster, more reliably, and without having to spend precious resources on manual testing.

If you're still not convinced of this benefit, consider this. Let's say a section of your web application allows users to sign up for your service. When prompted to sign up, the user must enter an email address, username, password, and password verification.

To test this manually, your developers would have to point a browser to the web application's address, then enter valid strings in the text areas for each piece of information and click Subscribe. They would have to do this in browser combinations like:

• Chrome on Windows
• Chrome on Linux
• Chrome on macOS
• Chrome on iOS
• Firefox on Windows
• Firefox on Linux
• Firefox on macOS
• Firefox on iOS
• Safari on iOS
• Safari on macOS

Then they need to do the same thing but enter invalid strings for each signup section. Rinse, wash and repeat.

This takes considerable time, especially since the sign-up section is just one part of the application. Your testers would then have to repeat similar tests for all aspects of the application. You don't want that. Instead, upgrade your development teams with Selenium so they can automate this process and save considerable time.

Another benefit of using Selenium is that it can be used for CI/CD, which helps you prioritize build releases frequently and quickly. Once you integrate Selenium into your CI/CD pipeline, your software development lifecycle becomes even more efficient and reliable.

Conclusion

Selenium is a powerful tool that has a very steep learning curve. However, the time it takes for your developers to familiarize themselves with this tool will be worth every second as it will help drastically reduce the time it takes to test your web applications.

Not only do you reduce testing time, but you also make these tests more reliable and repeatable, which makes Selenium a must-use for any company that wants to deploy web applications effectively and efficiently.