Learning Selenium

Selenium is an open-source tool for automating your testing of web applications. It has been around for many years and has become the most popular tool for automating web browsers. You can do what you want with it regarding browser functionality, use it to automate tests on web applications or even use it for web-based administration tasks. Selenium has the support of all of the largest web browser vendors, and is really well supported by the developer community.

There are three main ‘flavours’ of Selenium:

  • Selenium IDE
  • Selenium WebDriver
  • Selenium Server/Grid

Selenium IDE is a browser plug-in, and allows you to quickly create automated tests through record & reply and then add your own validation points.  The tests can be organised into Test Suites and executed easily, all point and click. The test scripts are viewed as a table of actions, so it becomes easy to understand, and edit them without coding. Selenium IDE is continually progressed as a tool by the developer community and the functionality provided now means that many organisations use it as a testing tool, without looking to use the more feature-rich Selenium WebDriver API.

 

Selenium WebDriver is an Object-Oriented API that allows you to control the web browser programmatically, and allows you to create automated tests that act just as a user would. Test Scripts can be executed on the local machine, or even remotely on other machines (using Selenium Server). It also supports multiple web browsers (Chrome, Internet explorer, Firefox, Opera, Edge), including iPhone & Android. For web testing we usually use the WebDriver API within a test framework such as JUnit, NUnit, XUnit or TestNG. These frameworks provide easier execution, validation methods and results reporting.

WebDriver provides a more feature-rich and coherent object-oriented approach to web testing, providing more power and flexibility than Selenium IDE, however it is a coding solution, so needs a bit of programming experience, compared to the simple keyword-driven table approach of Selenium IDE.

 

After choosing which Selenium you are going to learn, you will need to get training in the tool. There are many pitfalls with automated testing, as you need to build a solution that is maintainable, robust and reliable, so gaining best practices from our trainers who all have industry experience is key to building a good testing solution. With all of our courses, you are provided a comprehensive workbook which includes practical real-world examples and will get you up and running quickly.

 

Why use Selenium?

Selenium Logo

It has been around a long time now so is very fully-featured and very powerful when web testing, and being open-source it is free!

It is also a candidate for being a W3C standard, so will continue to be supported by all the browser vendors.

You can use your own choice of IDE for development of WebDriver scripts (The open-source ‘Eclipse’ IDE being very popular for Java, or IntelliJ IDEA, or Microsoft Visual Studio for C#). You can also choose from a number of different development languages, so you can program in the one that you are most comfortable with, although the most common languages for WebDriver are Java, JavaScript or C#.

 

You can deliver cross-browser testing, tests can be executed from the command-line, so developed as part of a continuous integration environment using tools like Jenkins & Team City. Using Selenium Server you can set up a Grid of physical and virtual remote machines, so execute web tests remotely on different platforms and different browsers, also allowing parallelization of execution!

Selenium is very well supported by the developer community and as it is very widely used, there are good resources for it, both on the internet and with companies and contractors that have Selenium experience.

Manual testing web applications is becoming more and more impractical with so many different browsers, browser versions, platforms (desktop, mobile, tablet), so test automation with tools like Selenium really is fast becoming the standard across organisations. So, if you are testing web applications, Selenium should definitely be considered as a possible automation tool.

 

What is the best approach to learning Selenium?

If you are new to automated testing you should always consider attending courses, as these will help you ‘hit the ground running’ saving you months of trial and error learning, also you will learn best practices, so avoid the common pitfalls in test automation.

Open-source tools like Selenium can be difficult to find good coherent resources for, so having instructor-led training can really simplify things for you.

Many people new to selenium start with Selenium IDE and then later move to the more powerful WebDriver framework. WebDriver is pure coding, so it is always useful to get trained and be armed with useful real-world examples to get you going.

If you want to get the best out of automation, get yourself trained!

 

Selenium classroom courses from Edgewords:

  • Selenium WebDriver Java – 3 Days – UK
  • Selenium WebDriver C# – 3 Days – UK
  • Selenium WebDriver JavaScript – 3 Days – UK

Training Centers in London and Birmingham. Hot and cold buffet lunch is provided along with refreshments and cakes throughout the day. We can also provide on-site training at your offices, call for a quote.

For the schedule and prices, please see our course schedule at: www.edgewordstraining.co.uk/automated-software-testing-training-courses/selenium-training/

 

Why use Edgewords?

Edgewords has been delivering training in automated testing for over 15 year and is recognised as one of Europe’s leading providers in this field. All of our trainers have at least 10 years testing experience, so can provide expert advice on industry best practices.

All of our courses are practical, written by testing consultants, so you really learn how to develop real-world tests and overcome common problems you will experience along the way.

Comprehensive workbooks are provided that act as a great resource after the course when you need to start developing automated tests on your own.

Simply call us on +44 (0)333 939 8884 or submit an enquiry form here and we will assist you in finding the most suitable course for your needs