4 Modules of Selenium Framework

When we talk about web drivers for automation, selenium is one of the most preferred choices among others. There are various tools encapsulated within this software that are helping developers all around the world. 

 

With the help of selenium, a developer can test whether its web application is working perfectly outside the local environment or not. Now, is it really necessary to test your web application? Well, yes.

 

You do need to test your application, it’s not always the same as it looks in a local environment, proper bug testing is necessary, but the testing process is time-consuming and that’s where this automated testing software comes into the picture.

 

Testing with the help of selenium reduces the bug-testing time as well as the cost of hiring a tester for the web app. Uses of selenium are not limited, we shall discuss everything about selenium in detail.

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Selenium Framework

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About Selenium Framework 

 

Selenium framework is capable of working with several programming languages such as python, java, Perl, Ruby, nodeJS, PHP, c#, javascript, and more. This open-source platform gives compatibility with multiple browsers such as chrome, safari, Mozilla Firefox, and many more. 

 

The versatile nature of selenium makes it a powerful tool and no wonder why it is loved by so many developers. One of the major benefits of working with selenium is that it is very easy to automate any web application because of its wide language reach, the software supports numerous languages that help developers to work with selenium, and also test cases are very easily implemented. 

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Different modules under the selenium framework

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There are various modules in the Selenium framework such as selenium grid, selenium IDE, selenium web driver, and selenium RC. Every component is unique and their working is needed to be understood properly to use selenium.

 

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Types of Selenium Modules

 

1. Selenium IDE

 

Selenium IDE is one of the plugins from the selenium suite, this is the easiest tool among others to use as this integrated development environment(IDE) doesn’t require any particular setup to get started. The earlier version of Selenium IDE was only compatible with firefox, but with the latest advancement in versions, it is now available for chrome as well.

 

This IDE enables a developer to test in the browser with the edit functionality so that it could be edited later as per requirement or you could also say that selenium IDE allows you to record user actions using a special graphical user interface.

 

It doesn’t require you to learn a test scripting language as it can convert the test cases into different programming languages, that’s why it is very flexible and easy to use.

 

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2. Selenium Grid

 

Whether you are new to programming or have a lot of experience, debugging is still brain-twisting work, this is where selenium testing becomes very handy, selenium automation testing is way better than its competition.

 

Moving testing to the cloud is one of a kind thing that the selenium framework does. Selenium framework has a special feature called a selenium grid that enables the testing to be done across multiple platforms on multiple machines. This software is a good example of a distributed system. 

 

Selenium grid supports almost every framework, you don’t have to worry about the programming language you are using for testing. As a learning programming language, boost your knowledge with Introduction to R Programming.

 

Architecture of Selenium Grid

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The architecture of Selenium Grid

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There is a remote web browser that is used to run tests from the local environment parallelly on a different machine. There is a server, known as the ‘hub’ which acts as a command center and routes the JSON format to the nodes. 

 

A ‘node’ is nothing but different machines on which we have to execute the tests. ‘Hub’ and ‘node’ are the two most important components of a selenium grid. There can be only one hub in a particular grid, nodes can be multiple.

 

We can also integrate the selenium framework with CD(continuous Delivery)/CI(Continuous Integration), this is a pipeline that helps in planning the consistency and delivering the testing in multiple stages. With the help of CI/CD bugs are closed really very fast. Docker and Jenkins are the two most popular CI/CD tools.

 

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3. Selenium RC

 

Selenium RC(remote control) is one of the tools, also known as Selenium 1 is also used for web automation purposes. It takes commands from the test program and deciphers them. Selenium RC uses Selenium Core which is a program built on javascript. 

 

Since it uses signals or commands, it is using the POST/GET method, therefore, any programming language capable of HTTP requests is compatible with selenium RC. 

 

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The architecture of Selenium RC

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Selenium RC is one of the earliest projects under the selenium framework and is hardly in any use since we got a selenium web driver. Selenium RC is slower in comparison with selenium web-driver as it uses javascript and it does not support HTML unit browsers which is the main reason behind its eradication.

 

 

4. Selenium Webdriver

 

Selenium web driver can be viewed as an up-gradation of selenium RC, it is also known as selenium 2.0. Selenium web driver is an open-source tool for web automation, this version also supports cross-browsing testing. While creating test scripts, you can use any programming language, this is a function that is missing in selenium IDE.

 

Selenium RC did not support testing with every browser, but the selenium web driver is compatible with almost every browser for testing, hence the multi-browser testing capability is higher in the case of selenium webdriver.

 

We already know that selenium RC requires a server for interaction, but selenium webdriver communicates directly with the browsers without any medium. Selenium web driver uses UI elements that are AJAX-based, it is also easier to use because of its drag and drops user navigation systems.

 

If we compare it to selenium RC, it is a way bigger API in size with more complexity although the architecture is simpler than that of Selenium RC.

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The architecture of Selenium Webdriver

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Client library holds binding between multiple programming languages, which is connected with JSON(javascript object notation), it acts as an interface between client and server. For each browser, there is a browser driver, for example for a chrome browser we have a chrome browser driver. 

 

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These drivers are used to communicate with the respective browser. If these drivers get any signal/command, then it is executed in the respected browser. The response after execution is sent back with the help of the HTTP server.

 

Conclusion

 

The selenium framework is indeed very versatile in nature as it offers compatibility with various operating systems and programming languages, however, this incredible tool comes with a slight limitation that it could only be used for web applications, and without a built-in facility to report it becomes little out-dated, however, the source code is open-source and every developer is free to make any changes according to their project requirement.