Introduction About Selenium Web Drivers
In the Present era, testing is an absolute necessity for digital organizations to thrive in the existing business market and user demand. Using test automation tools, software testing teams can now perform tests more quickly and efficiently thanks to automation testing. Automated testing is a well-known approach to software testing that makes use of automation tools to automate and streamline the testing process. Selenium is a popular automation tool that can be used in a variety of contexts. Over the past decade, Selenium has proven itself to be a powerful automated testing tool. Jason Huggins created it with the explicit intent of overcoming the drawbacks of manual testing.
What is Selenium?
Testing web applications can be automated using Selenium, a free and open-source framework. Tests for functionality and regression can be done in a variety of ways with this tool. Programming languages like Java, C#, Python, and a slew of others can be used to create Selenium test scripts. In addition to supporting a wide range of browsers and operating systems, these scripts can also be used on Windows, Linux, Mac OS, and Solaris. Cross-browsing is also supported by Selenium, allowing the test cases to run on multiple platforms at the same time. Additionally, it can be used to create and run tests in regression automation frameworks that are browser-based.
In addition, it has a number of tool suites, such as Selenium IDE, Selenium RC Selenium Grid, and Selenium Webdriver. Amongst which, Selenium Webdriver is one of the most significant and frequently used browser product suites for a variety of reasons.
Selenium WebDrivers
Using Selenium’s WebDriver, you can automate your browser testing. A browser-specific driver is used to implement this automation framework, which allows it to interact directly with browsers and perform actions on their behalf. Moreover, Selenium WebDriver has a wide range of operating systems and browsers supported.
Programming languages : C#, Java, Perl, Ruby, PHP, JavaScript, and Python.
Browsers: Internet Explorer, Google Chrome, Apple Safari, Mozilla Firefox, Opera 11.5 and GhostDriveretc
The Architecture of Selenium WebDriver
The architecture of Selenium WebDriver revolves around how the tool interacts with the web browser and automates the entire web application. Its structure is composed of the following four parts:
- JSON WIRE PROTOCOL over HTTP Client
- Selenium Client Libraries
- Browser Drivers
- Browsers
JSON WIRE Protocol over HTTP Client
In order to transfer data from a server to a client over a network, JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) or JSON should be used. Data is transferred between HTTP servers using the JSON Wire Protocol, a REST API.
Selenium Client Libraries
Selenium Client Libraries Selenium’s creators have also added language bindings, allowing the framework to work with scripts in many other languages.
Browser Drivers
In general, different and distinct browser drivers are available for each major browser. In addition, these browser drivers communicate with their corresponding browsers without exposing the operational logic of the browser’s features. As a result, when a command is sent to one of these browser drivers, the expected response is returned in the HTTP response.
Browsers
Numerous browsers, including Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Apple Safari, and Internet Explorer, are supported by Selenium WebDriver.
Illustration
You can use any of the enabled Selenium client libraries to write the code in your UI (like Eclipse IDE) in real-time (using Java).
Example :
WebDriver driver = new ChromeDriver();
Example: driver.get(“<a href=”https://www.amazon.in”>https://www.amazon.in</a>”);
To run the program, simply click on the Run button when you’ve finished writing your script. As a result of the above statements, the chrome browser will be launched and the amazon website will be opened in it.
A URL will be generated for each statement in your script as soon as you click the ‘Run’ button by means of JSON Wire Protocol over HTTP. The URIs will be sent to whichever browser driver is currently active. (ChromeDriver is used in the code above). In this particular instance, the client library, which is written in Java, will communicate with the ChromeDriver after converting the script’s statements into the JSON data format.
Requests for HTTP resources are routed through an HTTP server, which is used by every driver in a browser. The URL will be sent to the Browser Driver, which will then send it over HTTP to the actual browser. When you have finished, your Selenium script will run on the browser and run the commands you specified.
In the event that the request is a “POST” request, then the browser will be made to perform an action. If the request is a “GET” request, the browser will generate the corresponding response. After that, it will be transferred using HTTP to the browser driver, after which the browser driver will use the JSON Wire Protocol to transfer it to the user interface (Eclipse IDE).
Characteristics of Selenium WebDrivers
- The in-built browser support of Selenium WebDriver allows it to interact directly with the web browsers.
- It controls the browser from the operating system level at a faster pace
- HTML Unit is supported.
- Result HTML files are generated automatically.
- Webdriver can be used for testing on both Android and iOS devices.
Why Selenium Web drivers are Widely adopted?
- The open-source nature of Selenium WebDriver makes it a popular choice.
- Programming languages like Python, JavaScript, PHP, Ruby, and C# are all supported.
- A multitude of browsers are supported
- Various compatibility tests for browsers are supported
- Effectively facilitates cross-platform testing.
Conclusion
All you need to know about selenium web drivers are discussed in detail in this article to offer you insights into its components, characteristics, and working, and also, its superiority is emphasized here. Understanding such concepts assists us to upskill ourselves to stay competitive with recent developments.
Meta description: Selenium web drivers are popular testing tool that are compatible with numerous programming languages, browsers and Operating systems.
