Which tool is used in Selenium?
Selenium consists of four important tools that constitute the “Selenium tool suite.” The first tool is the Selenium IDE (Integrated Development Environment) which was developed to automate functional testing as a Firefox plug-in. The second tool is RC (Remote Control) which uses test scripts for testing web applications written in any programming language. The third tool is WebDriver which is focused on analyzing various web browsers. The fourth tool is Grid which can also work alongside WebDriver. The Grid act as a server/hub and the browser drivers acts as a node. In this article, you will get a brief idea about the four tools of Selenium.
What is Selenium?
It is one of the most popular tools used for testing web applications. The browser behavior such as scrolling down a page, clicking on a button, typing in a search bar etc., is driven by selenium testing. Selenium scripts can be written in popular programming languages such as Ruby, Perl, PHP, C#, Java, PHP etc. It is an open-source tool and hence can be easily downloaded. It has a large online community where a lot of information, material and knowledge exchange takes place.
The “Selenium tool suite” consists of four important tools namely Selenium IDE (Integrated Development Environment), Selenium RC (Remote Control), Selenium WebDriver and Selenium Grid.
1. Selenium IDE (Integrated Development Environment): It provides record and playback functionality on test scripts. Testers can test the script written in TestNG, JUnit, C#, Ruby, HTML, Java, Python, R Spec etc. Test scripts produced through IDE are not portable, robust and feasible and it has a very less variable range. All the browsers are supported by Selenium IDE. This selenium testing tool can move the commands very quickly and provides auto-completion support.
2. Selenium RC (Remote Control): This selenium testing tool allows manual testers to write their code for automation tests or web or mobile application UI tests in any of the supported programming language or scripting languages. A proxy HTTP server is provided with a task to know that the application that has been tested comes from the domain that is provided by the proxy server, which is going to be tested in a web browser.
It comes with two components as follows:
- A library that contains Selenium RC client, which is a programming language code
- For web requests, it behaves as an HTTP proxy that can be consolidated as a Selenium RC server.
3. Selenium WebDriver: It is considered to be one of the most important selenium testing tools. It provides a scripting-based interface or programming so that tests can be created and run. Web components are recognized by writing test scripts (probably web tests) and then the desired task is carried out on those elements on portals or web pages.
There is no need for a mediator as web browser calls are available directly. Action is directly taken by WebDriver on different compilers or browsers so that there is a possibility of obtaining identical drivers for every browser.
Some of the most popular WebDrivers are listed below:
- Opera driver
- Safari Driver
- HTML Unit driver
- Google Chrome driver
- Internet Explorer driver and
- Mozilla Firefox driver (Gecko Driver).
4. Selenium Grid: Through this tool, actions can be taken on tests on different servers or machines in contrast to unique or different browsers in a parallel environment or a parallel world mechanism. Test scripts can be compiled and run in a parallel environment on virtual machines or different machines running on different browsers and operating systems.
Conclusion: If you are looking forward to implementing selenium testing for your specific project, then do get connected with a professionally acclaimed software testing services company that will provide you with a tactical testing roadmap that is in line with your project specific requirements.
About the author: I am a technical content writer focused on writing technology specific articles. I have focused to provide a brief description of the four key tools used in selenium testing that can help readers to acquire a decent amount of knowledge. I strive to provide well-researched information on the leading market savvy technologies.
