Selenium is one of the most widely utilized and well-known DevOps tools. Nevertheless, choosing a tool is only half the battle; you must also choose the proper programming language for your tool. Java can be helpful in this regard.
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What is Selenium?
Selenium is an open-source, free framework that is used to automate the testing process for web applications. Selenium is widely available in four types, and the Selenium WebDriver is one of the most popular.
The Selenium WebDriver is known to be an object-oriented API that is being used to automate interactions with the web browsers like Edge, Firefox, Chrome, etc., via applying browser drivers. The Selenium Grid helps run the tests parallely across the platforms and browsers. The Grid also follows the hub-node concept, where the tester can execute the WebDriver scripts on a single hub. Still, you should know multiple remote nodes will complete the execution through routing commands.
LambdaTest is a cross-browser testing platform by providing a cloud-based infrastructure for developers to perform automated and manual testing of web and mobile applications over more than 3000+ browsers and OS combinations. LambdaTest also integrates with popular CI/CD tools like Jenkins, Travis CI, and CircleCI, making it easy to run Selenium tests as part of the CI/CD pipeline. This ensures that any issues are identified and fixed early in the development process, reducing the risk of bugs entering production.
Java And Selenium
The fact that Selenium is a collection of tools to utilize rather than just one is among its most crucial qualities. Selenium supports many web browsers, including Chrome, Safari, Firefox, Mozilla, and others. Then, many programming languages can be employed to create Selenium test scripts. These languages include Ruby, Java, Python, C#, etc.
Even though various other languages may be used, Java is currently the most popular programming language for creating Selenium scripts.
Why is Java recommended to be used with Selenium?
Selenium and Java make the best pair for automating testing across web browsers. Most specialists regularly using Selenium have said Java is their preferred programming language.
To use with Selenium, Java is advised for several reasons, including the following:
- A sizable and engaged developer community exists for the Java programming language, and members of this community actively contribute to creating test cases.
- Programs created in Java execute much faster when compared to ones written in other programming languages.
- Even though Java is currently the most used language and Selenium testing, integration with Java is now easier than before.
Choosing the right language can vary per individual, project, and organization. However, gaining in-depth knowledge while dealing with Selenium is an important criterion.
Best Practices for Selenium Platform Automated Testing
By utilizing automation testing, we can decrease the workload associated with manual testing, accelerate execution, find the most faults as quickly as possible, enhance coverage, and shorten the time required to launch a product. Yet, creating a trustworthy and consistent test case may be challenging for various reasons, such as test flakiness, incorrect testing methodology, etc. Using the right tool for automated testing makes it simpler for organizations to test their code and fix any flaws, ultimately reducing the time it takes to get a product to market.
Let’s talk about some of the well-supported recommendations and design patterns that the Selenium community suggests to help you create well-architected test suites in this section on Selenium with Java. The Selenium community has recommended these rules and practices because of their usefulness. Remembering that no “one size fits all” approach to test automation is critical. Consider carefully what will work best in your particular context before moving forward.
Making preparations in advance by organizing and creating test cases
Before starting to write any automated tests, the quality assurance teams are strongly urged to make an effort to create a suitable test plan. Unfortunately, according to recent surveys, eighty percent of all projects automate activities without creating a detailed plan.
To ensure the application is fool-proof, the quality assurance specialists must create every possible logical scenario and the most significant number of test cases from the end-users perspective.
Using the Page Object Model
As the UI starts changing, the Selenium locators will also be impacted, and we need to update locators in all Selenium test scripts. Yet, creating and organizing test cases becomes more difficult as the application’s complexity increases and the Interface undergoes more frequent modifications. POM, commonly called the Page Object Model, is a popular design pattern used in Selenium automated testing. Its use aids in reducing code duplication and enhancing test management.
In the POM model, the various web elements, validations, and actions happening at every web page will be wrapped in the class file known as Page Object. With the POM, it is possible to distinguish between page-specific and testing code, such as layouts and locators.
As the code unique to each page is centrally located, it can be reused across all test cases, which helps cut down the code duplication. In addition, if any UI changes exist, the fix must be performed for related page objects and never on dependent test cases, making the code maintenance much easier.
Reporting and Logging ought to be included.
As the number of test suites rises, finding the problematic test case and performing troubleshooting get more and more challenging. For these cases, logging and reporting practices can be great saviors.
The test report is a document that summarizes all the details of a certain test run. For example, this data could consist of the total time spent on the test, the number of successful and unsuccessful test instances, an error with a snapshot, and other relevant information. Although Selenium does not provide reporting features by default, they can be added using test automation frameworks like TestNG.
By using Logging, we can better understand our code, which facilitates easier debugging. Examining the logs is the best way to determine why your code is encountering a problem. Some popular log levels include debugging, warning, informative, error, and critical. Good Logging will always save you valuable time. However, if done excessively, it may prevent the test from running more slowly.
Choosing the Best Locators to Meet Your Requirements
The automation test script writing involves a lot of time locating various web elements.
Selenium offers us a wide range of choices for finding a web element, including ID, CSS Selector, Name, XPath, Link Text, DOM Locator, and many others.
Yet, certain web locators are significantly more brittle than others. We must choose the proper web locators because the UI implementation is prone to frequent changes. By doing this, the amount of disturbance brought on by UI code changes during the automation testing will be lessened. Use Name and ID locators if available because they are easy to find and more dependable because they are less likely to be changed.
5 Common Mistakes to Avoid While using Selenium with Java
Here are the five common mistakes that you should avoid while using Selenium with Java:
1. Windows application testing
As Selenium WebDriver is primarily used for automated testing of web-based applications, we cannot use it to test Windows-based apps.
For instance, Selenium is incompatible with the Windows platform, so if we wanted to automate testing for a Windows application like a native “Calculator,” we couldn’t. Despite our best efforts, we cannot get the Calculator software to launch on the Windows system, despite using Selenium and Appium.
As a result, Microsoft has been creating and working on automated testing on Windows-based apps over the past few years, which would not be possible with Selenium and Appium. Without Microsoft’s efforts, conducting these experiments would not have been feasible.
2. Mac Apps Testing
Selenium tests cannot be run on Mac programs, just as they cannot be done on Windows applications. On the other hand, the Appium Mac driver can be added to a Selenium Test Framework to allow a certain level of basic automation on Mac programs.
3. Captcha Verification
“Captcha.” or “Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Machines and Humans Different,” is a challenge-response test frequently used in many websites to ascertain whether or not the user accessing the site is a robot or a real person is the Captcha test.
The standard methodology when running automated Captcha test scenarios is to either disable Captcha, especially in test environments, or add a hook that will allow the tests to bypass Captcha or make the Captcha field optional in the test environment so that if the Captcha step is skipped, the test will not be adversely affected.
On the other hand, the Selenium test automation framework is incompatible with the Captcha verification method. These tests can only be passed if one of the techniques above for bypassing Captcha is applied. Automating Captcha has never been easy for testers, although in some cases, it is possible.
4. QR Code /Barcode Verification
Selenium Web Driver does not allow testers to read barcodes or QR codes. Although QR codes and barcodes can be automated, they do not serve the real-time purpose required for automation.
Third-party APIs must be incorporated into the current test scenarios to fully grasp the possibilities of automating QR code and barcode verification using Selenium. However, it is advised that the test be performed manually to obtain the best level of accuracy possible.
5. Device / Embed /Hardware Testing
Selenium cannot automate testing that is being done on specialized or embedded hardware. We must always remember that automating test flows if manual testing takes less time and effort would be a terrible idea because automation test scenarios are often thought of as being for saving time, enhancing dependability, and lowering effort. Therefore, automating those flows isn’t a good idea if manual testing takes less time and effort.
Consider a situation where running any script or program automatically takes longer than running it manually. There are better ideas than automating the same process in the real world if this is the case. They recently reduced the time needed to complete the task or helped organizations enter the market more quickly by using quicker and rapid releases. Selenium has limited applications.
Just like exploratory testing is only sometimes possible, automating everything will often be wrong. It is quite more important than automating every use case in the projects. The scenario needs to prioritize what has to be tested and how quickly you can integrate the automated test for CD-CI pipelines to add value to the development lifecycle.
Conclusion
We have listed the five common mistakes you should avoid while using Selenium with Java above. But before starting, you must be familiar with Selenium’s main use case, evaluating browser compatibility. Also, it’s critical that we consistently remind ourselves that automation exists to help us spend less time, money, and effort.