What is Selenium?

Selenium is nothing but a free automation testing framework. Selenium is a chamber of tools. Chambers can be further divided into three parts:

1. Selenium 2: Selenium RC and Selenium web driver are merged now and called as selenium2, update to Selenium 3. It will help you to automate web application by interacting each and every action that can occur on the UI.
2. Selenium IDE: Using Selenium IDE we can do record of all the interactions in the browser and play back the recorded scripts whenever necessary. No need to have prior programming knowledge.
3. Selenium Grid: When we need to run the selenium scripts on multiple browser, we may use selenium Grid. It basically uses the concept of the Hub and nodes, where we have one hub and multiple node attached the hub and the scripts may run on that many browser simultaneously

1. Open Source:
   One of the most important benefits of using Selenium as Automation tool is Open Source, we can easily download it from the selenium official website. Website Link: https://www.selenium.dev/downloads/
   Selenium is used to validate Test scenarios of web applications on various browsers and platforms. Selenium is basically used for functional and regression testing we can also do load testing using the tool. It is one of the most widely used test automation tool for web application. Companies like sauce labs and browser stack have sponsored selenium. It will save us couple of amount and we can be utilized the amount somewhere else. We also get code elasticity which means we can modify the code as per our need and use it. There is no doubt in saying, that it is one of the best automation tool which supports multiple languages or would rather call as a portable software testing tool.
   
   
2. Good Community Backup and Regular Updates:
   Selenium community is a very huge chain of selenium framework developers and testers. You may ask the questions regarding selenium or may post the error message, support team or any member of the community will reply with a well explanatory answer and that too on a very short interval. Chat option is also available, where you will find that the selenium community is very active. There are many blogs written on selenium automation with integration of various tools, new features and upcoming technology
   
   
3. Supports Multiple Browser, Platforms and Language:
   Selenium community is a very huge chain of On the important feature of selenium is its compatibility, as said we can execute selenium scripts on multiple browser, platforms
   
   1. We can run selenium scripts on different browser such as chrome, Firefox, edge and IE. As the scripts as reusable we run the same scripts on different browser.
   2. Selenium supports multiple languages like Java, Python, C#, Ruby, JavaScript, Perl, PHP, etc.
   3. Selenium is also supported on different operating system like Linux, Windows and MAC.
   The modification in code level was very less if we need to switch to different browser or platforms. There is a class called as desired capabilities which helps the user to declare the pre request (requirements) such as the browser details, platform details, device details, etc. It is nothing but a key-value pairs which are encoded using JSON Objects.
   
   
4. Framework and Parallel Execution:
   A framework is a structure pattern of writing the code which will help the developer to maintain the code at a long run and framework will make your code more efficient. If we follow a good framework structure we may use the existing code (reusability) whenever required and let’s say if there are any major changes at the framework level, a better structure help us change the core code with a small number of changes. It will also give you a better code readability. We may also use design pattern (Page object model, Page factory) to achieve more readability and robustness.
   Frameworks:
   • Data Driven Test Framework
     
   • Keyword Driven Test Framework
     
   • Hybrid Test Framework
   
   Using Selenium grid and TestNG, we can execute selenium scripts parallel, which would uplift the execution time and we could get quick result/output. Once the release goes live using CI/CD we can auto trigger the automation scripts (Regression scripts) using parallel execution each and every time as a new release goes live. By following the above procedure, we may achieve high quality testing of most of the application flow at a very fast rate. Session handling and testing dependencies setup should be done properly. TestNG and JUNIT Framework: In Selenium we don’t have a main method, instead the scripts are executed based on TestNG annotation. There are several features of TestNG, which allows selenium execution in a specific pattern. Features such as annotations, parameterization, thread safe, data providers and execution priorities gives more flexibility to selenium test cases. Based on the requirements, we can run selective test cases with much more flexibility.
   
   
5. Easy Integration with Other Tools:
   Selenium can be integrated with many tools for better output/Result. a. Tools for Reporting (Extent Report, Allure Report). Reporting tools will offer you a better GUI for all the automation reports such that the result will look interactive and graphically represented. b. Jenkins, Hudson, etc. for Continuous Integration and Continuous Development. Using CI/CD tool we may activate our automation builds after the production release. It will help us to automate the entire testing process. c. Build tool such as Maven, Gradle, Ant, etc. can be blended. Basically, it has a central repository where most of the common jars will be stored instead of adding the jar one by one to the project, we have to simply build the project, all the jars will be imported into a specific folder and once the build is completed going forward we may use the class/jar files. It will also compile the source code for you and will allow you to control and arrange your build. d. There are other tools such Sikuli, Auto IT and Robot class etc.

Conclusion :

Selenium is free open-source, automation testing tool and also have constant updates. It supports different languages, browser and OS. There are different frameworks and tools which can be easily merged with selenium. We can also place a trigger which will execute the selenium scripts using the CI/CD. Because of its flexibility with different environments and easily adaptive with different tool, the selenium automation tool is accepted globally. The community is very swift to reply to any query which make selenium resourceful and cost effective. Hence, I would like to culminate that there are many automation tools around the world, nevertheless selenium is one of the best Automation tools in the market.