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Hi everyone! today we explore Selenium WebDriver Architecture In Testing. In the modern world, with each passing day, hundreds of web and mobile applications are being deployed to the web. QA team has to always be on their toes to ensure that these web applications are functional outside the development environment by ensuring the functionality is adequately tested before release to the customer.

Prior, this drawn-out task was finished by the manual testers through the human force of perception, taking a gigantic measure of time. Selenium entered the business. Selenium is a set-up of devices viz. Selenium IDE, WebDriver, Selenium RC, and so forth assist the QA with joining to mimic client activities on the internet browser and mechanizes the client stream, consequently helping in executing a huge no of experiments in a limited capacity to focus time.

Selenium Webdriver is one of the basic individuals from this family and is notable for its variety and security for web automation. Selenium Webdriver has sort of turned into a true for UI automation and over 80% of the organizations are utilizing it. Let’s understand the details of this tool by covering the following sections:

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What is Selenium?

Selenium is a free (open source) automated testing framework used to validate web applications across different browsers and platforms. You can use multiple programming languages like Java, C#, Python, etc to create Selenium Test Scripts. Testing done using the Selenium testing tool is usually referred to as Selenium Testing.

Selenium Software is not just a single tool but a suite of software, each piece catering to different Selenium QA testing needs of an organization. Here is the list of tools

• Selenium Integrated Development Environment (IDE)
• Selenium Remote Control (RC)
• WebDriver
• Selenium Grid

At the moment, Selenium RC and WebDriver are merged into a single framework to form Selenium 2.

What is Selenium WebDriver?

Selenium WebDriver is a bunch of open-source APIs, which furnished the capacities to collaborate with any of the cutting-edge internet browsers and afterward, thus, computerize the client activities with that program.

It is a fundamental part of the Selenium family. As we probably are aware, Selenium is not a free device; rather, an assortment of instruments make the Selenium suite, which was made when two undertakings Selenium RC and WebDriver were blended.

Why use Selenium WebDriver for Web Automation?

Now that we know what Selenium WebDriver is and what it does let’s take a look at why it is the optimum choice to use for web automation.

• DescriptionDynamic Web Page Automation: Selenium WebDriver can mechanize dynamic sites where the substance of pages changes by client activities.
• Works Close to Browser: Program merchants transport their WebDriver execution. Subsequently, they are firmly coupled to the program giving a superior testing experience.
• Technology Agnostic: Selenium WebDriver permits you to mechanize the experiments for all the web applications, regardless of the innovation utilized for the improvement of the application under test.
• Mimics Real User: Selenium WebDriver permits QA to impersonate client activities on the sites. Selenium WebDriver can imitate ordinary client activities like structure filling, clicking, double tapping, and key-press, as well as cutting edge client activities like simplified, snap and hold, and so on.
• Supports Cross Browser Testing: Selenium WebDriver enjoys the main benefit while doing cross-program testing — where a QA can test for a similar site, utilizing a similar piece of code on various programs. It empowers the confirmation and approval of experiments on numerous arrangements of programs simultaneously.
• Supports parallel Execution: On the off chance that there are more scripts to be executed on numerous programs, doing them individually is tedious. So Selenium WebDriver permits equal execution, utilizing structures like TestNG, so the execution of experiments is quicker. This permits huge scope execution of experiments in a brief time frame.
• View Execution Results: Selenium WebDriver permits a QA to see the live execution of the mechanized trial on the PC framework as well as on some other CI/CD pipeline machine by supporting functionalities like the screen capture, video-recording of test cases, and so on.
• Supports modern development techniques: Selenium WebDriver coordinates very well with present-day Software Development standards like Behavior Driven Development through reconciliation with the Cucumber library.

In general, Selenium WebDriver is one of the main pieces of the Selenium suites, which upholds practically every one of the highlights required for the automation of a web application.

Why Selenium WebDriver is popular?

Apart from the above-mentioned capabilities, WebDriver, being part of the Selenium family, also encompassed some unique characteristics, which adds to its popularity as a web automation tool. A few of those characteristics are:

• Multi-Browser Compatibility — One of the excellent explanations behind the prevalence of Selenium and WebDriver is its cross-program support utilizing a similar piece of code. It provides the capacity to run a particular piece of code that imitates a certifiable client utilizing a program’s local help to hit direct API calls without the requirement for any middleware software or device. The below shows a sample list of browsers supported:

• Multi-Language Support — Not all testers are knowledgeable about a specific language. Since Selenium offers help for some dialects so a tester can utilize any language out of the upheld dialects and afterward use WebDriver for automation. This allows composing code in the language individuals is alright with.
• Faster Execution —Unlike Selenium RC, WebDriver doesn’t rely upon a middleware server to communicate with the browser. WebDriver coordinates correspondences with browsers utilizing a characterized convention (JSON Wire), which empowers it to convey quicker than most Selenium devices. Additionally, since JSON Wire itself utilizes JSON, which is exceptionally lightweight, how much information move per call is extremely least. The below figure shows clearly how the WebDriver communicates with the Browser:

• Locating Web Elements — To perform activities like Click, Type, Drag, and Drop we first need to distinguish on which web component (like button, checkbox, drop-down, text region) we want to play out an activity. To work with this, WebDriver has given techniques to distinguish web components utilizing different HTML credits — like id, name, class, CSS, label name, XPath, interface text, and so on.
• Handling dynamic web elements — There are times when there are web components on the page that, change with each reload of the page. Since the HTML credits transform, it turns into a test to recognize these components. Selenium gives different strategies to deal with these circumstances –
• Absolute Xpath — this contains the complete XML path of the element in question.
• Contains( ) — using these functional elements can be searched with partial or full text and can be used to handle dynamic elements.
• Starts-With( ) — this function is based on finding elements using starting text of the attribute under question.
• Handling Waiting for Elements — Not every one of the pages has a similar construction. Some are lightweight, while some have a lot of information taking care of or AJAX calls. Commonly the web components get some margin to stack. To represent this WebDriver has given various holding up components that can be utilized to stop the content execution for a necessary measure of time given specific circumstances and afterward proceed with once the condition is full-filled. The accompanying figure shows an example list that shows the capacities of WebDriver which helps in dealing with the unique way of behaving of web pages.

What are the drawbacks of Selenium WebDriver?

Although Selenium works a long way out in solving the *UI *and functional automation of web applications, it is not without its drawbacks. Let’s look at some of the shortcomings/drawbacks:

• Requires Programming Knowledge and Expertise — Since WebDriver permits you to computerize the client activities utilizing code written in a specific programming language, any individual who needs to utilize it ought to have an essential comprehension of how coding in the language functions. Individuals who don’t have a comprehension of coding in a programming language will find it hard to utilize WebDriver.
• No Support for Desktop Applications — Selenium environment, including WebDriver, was worked for the automation of web applications. In that capacity assuming you are hoping to Automate windows based applications, you can not do such.
• No Customer Support — The selenium ecosystem, including WebDriver is open-source, and that implies it is driven by people and not by any organization. Along these lines, there is not a committed help group to investigate your issues. On the off chance that an individual has stuck someplace, there are numerous networks, and discussions on which an individual can depend, however, there’s nothing else to it.
• No Built-In Object Repository — Paid tools like UFT/QTP give a concentrated area to store objects/components, called the Object Repository. This capacity isn’t given as a matter of course in Selenium WebDriver. This can be defeated utilizing approaches like the Page Object Model, yet it requires impressive coding abilities and aptitude.
• Lack of built-in reporting — Selenium WebDriver can assist you with running your automation tests yet to give a detailing capacity, you would have to coordinate it with a testing framework like Junit, TestNG, PyTest, Allure, and so on.
• Managing Browser-Selenium Dependencies —Since Selenium needs to depend on similarity between the program drivers and the genuine program itself, commonly because of contradiction or bugs in either the program driver or program, usefulness breaks, and clients need to depend on local area backing to sort it out.

Understanding of Selenium WebDriver Architecture:

Being a piece of the general part framework, we find that the Selenium WebDriver isn’t a standalone testing tool. It involves different parts that are expected to run tests. These are the architectural components of Selenium.

So first let’s take a look at this image below

This image tells us about the core selenium web driver architecture and the major selenium components which comprise WebDriver.

• Selenium WebDriver Client Libraries / Language Bindings — Software Testers need to select languages that they are comfortable with. Since WebDriver Architecture upholds various dialects, so there are ties accessible for a scope of dialects like Java, C#, Python, Ruby, PHP, and so on. Any individual who has fundamental information on working with any programming language can get explicit language ties and can get going. This is the way Selenium Architecture gives adaptability to testers to do automation in their usual range of familiarity.
• JSON WIRE PROTOCOL — According to the Selenium Architecture over, the JSON Wire Protocol works with all the correspondence that is occurring in Selenium between the program and the code. This is the core of Selenium. JSON Wire Protocol gives a medium to information move utilizing a RESTful (Representational State Transfer) API which gives a vehicle system and characterizes a RESTful web service using JSON over HTTP.
• Browser Drivers — Since different programs are upheld by Selenium, every program has its execution of the W3C standard that Selenium gives. As such program explicit doubles are accessible that are intended for the program and conceal the execution rationale from the end client. JSONWire convention lays out an association between the program pairs and the client libraries.
• Browsers — Selenium will be simply ready to run tests on the browser if they are privately introduced, either on the local machine or on the server machines. So browser installation is essential.

How does Selenium WebDriver work?

In the section above, we saw the architecture of Selenium. Now let’s see how behind the scenes all the communication happens.

Take a look at the image below — this shows a view of what the actual workflow looks like.

When a user writes a WebDriver code in Selenium and executes it, the following actions happen in the background:

• An HTTP request generates, and it goes to the respective browser driver (Chrome, IE, Firefox). There is an individual request for each Selenium command.
• The browser driver receives the request through an HTTP server.
• The HTTP server decides which actions/instructions need to execute on the browser.
• The browser executes the instructions/steps as decided above.
• The HTTP server then receives the execution status and then sends back the status to an automation script, which then shows the result ( as passed or an exception or error).

How to use Selenium WebDriver for Web Automation?

Selenium WebDriver provides a very seamless, user-friendly, and code-friendly approach to automation using various browsers. Since it supports most of the major browser vendors, it’s just a matter of using the respective browser driver and browser and setting up Selenium to use the same.

For any Selenium test script, there are generally the following 7 steps, which apply to all the test cases and all the applications under test (AUT):

1. Create an instance of WebDriver specific to the Browser:

• Eg: To create an instance of the Firefox driver, we can use the following commands:

import org.openqa.selenium.WebDriver;
import org.openqa.selenium.firefox.FirefoxDriver;
WebDriver driver = new FirefoxDriver();

2. Navigate to the desired Web page which needs to be automated:

• Eg: To navigate to the “https://www.google.com/“, we can use the following command:

driver.get("https://www.google.com/")

3. Locate an HTML element on the Web page:

• To interact with a web page, we need to locate the HTML elements on the web page. We can use any of the element locator strategies mentioned in “Selenium Locators”. Eg: if we want to get the “Full Name” text box, we can use the following commands:

import org.openqa.selenium.By; 
import org.openqa.selenium.WebElement; 
WebElement usernameElement = driver.findElement(By.id("userName"));

4. Act on an HTML element:

We can perform certain actions on the HTML elements, such as typing something using the SendKeys method, and clicking on the element if it is a button. Eg: if we want to type the name in the identified text box, we can use the following commands:

usernameElement.sendKeys("Pragati Oli");

5. Run tests and record test results using a test framework.

And, we are done with using the WebDriver to identify and perform the needed actions on the Web Application. Depending on the browser, on which we need to test our application, we can use the corresponding WebDriver.

Here is a list of various browsers and their respective browser drivers:

Recently Microsoft moved their Edge browser to the same platform as Chromium (which is the parent for Chrome), and due to this ChromeDriver can now also support Microsoft Edge Chromium.

Conclusion:

Selenium is a cost-effective and flexible tool developer can use in the automation testing of their web applications. The most intriguing feature of this software is the capacity to test applications across different internet browsers. This guarantees that sites don’t crash or breakdown down specific programs.

The Selenium software is great for organizations creating applications that help heavy traffic, particularly friendly stages and internet business sites. This software has gone through progress throughout the long term, which has increased the value of web development.

❤ ❤ Thanks for reading this article ❤❤

If I got something wrong? Let me know in the comments. I would love to improve.

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