Selenium Tutorial

Automation Tools:

Following are the most standard test automation tool used in most of the companies:

QTP/UFT: HP Functional Test, earlier known as HP’s Quick Test Professional is the Automation testing tool that supports number of environments such as Java, SAP, Delphi and many more. QTP can be collaborated with Quality centre which is actually a Test Management tool used for client/server applications.

Rational Robot: It is basically an IBM tool that is used to automate functional, regression and configuration tests for e-commerce, client server as well as ERP applications. This tool can be used with Rational Test Manager that helps in Test Management Activities

Selenium: This is an open source web Automation Tool which supports all kinds of web browsers and the most demanding tool in today’s market. Many companies are using this tool for sake of its performance and price. It can be integrated with multiple Test Management tools, Continuous Integration Tools etc.

How an Automation Tool should be chosen? 

It is really a tricky task to choose an Automation tool. Following criteria will assist you in choosing the best automation tool for your test automation.

• There should be an Environment Support.
• It’s easy to use.
• Database Testing Feature should be present.
• Object identification should be there.
• Image Testing.
• Error Recovery Testing.
• Object Mapping availability.
• Scripting Language should be used.
• It should support various kinds of test such as- functional, mobile, etc
• Multiple testing frameworks should be supported.
• Debugging of automation software scripts is easy.
• Should recognize objects in any environment.
• Widespread test reports and results.
• Lessen training cost of selected tools.

Automation Tool selection is one of major trials to be undertaken prior opting for automation. Initially requirements should be identified, various tools and its capabilities should be explored. You should set the expectation from the tool further going for a Proof of concept.

Framework in Automation 

A framework is actually a set of automation guidelines. It increases code re-usability, portability, reduce script maintenance cost etc. These are not rules and are not mandatory. You can script without following the guidelines. But you may miss some advantages of having a Framework. Guidelines are like:

• Maintains consistency of Testing
• Improved test structuring
• Usage of code is minimum
• Less Maintenance of code
• Re-usability is Improved
• Non-Technical testers can collaborate in code
• Training period of using the tool can be lessen
• Involves Data wherever suitable

Four types of framework are generally used in software automation testing:

1. Hybrid Automation Framework
2. Data Driven Automation Framework
3. Modular Automation Framework
4. Keyword Driven Automation Framework

What are Automation Best Practices? 

Observe the following to get maximum ROI of automation

• Scope of Automation needs to be firm in much detail prior to start of the project. This will set expectations from Automation right.
• Select the right automation tool: A tool should not be selected grounded on its status instead, it’s acceptance to the automation requirements.
• Select suitable framework
• Scripting Standards– Standards have to be followed during writing the scripts for Automation. Some of them include-
  • Generate constant scripts, comments and indentation of the code
  • Adequate Exception handling include – How bug is handled on system failure or unexpected behaviour of the application.
  • User defined messages should be standardized or coded for Error Logging for testers to recognize.
• Measure metrics– Success of automation is determined by capturing the following metrics and not by comparing the manual effort with the automation effort.

• Time requisite for automation testing for each and every release cycle
• Percent of defects to be found
• Customer satisfaction Index
• Minimum Time taken for release
• Productivity improvement

The above guidelines are indeed helpful while making selection of your automation tool.

What are the benefits of Automated Testing?

Following are advantages of automated testing:

• Much more faster than the manual testing say 70%
• Broader test coverage of application features
• Consistent in results
• Confirm Consistency
• Saves Cost and Time
• Increases accuracy
• Human Intervention is not needed during execution
• Rises Efficiency
• Excellent speed in executing tests
• Test scripts can be re-used
• Test thoroughly and Frequently
• Through automation, More  cycle of execution can be achieved
• Primary time to market

Conclusion:

You should have three essential things for Automation to be successful. They are Right selection of automation tool, testing process and team. For successful testing, Manual and automation methods go hand-in hand.

Manual testing is very convenient as compared to Automation testing as it is performed by human who sits in front of computer, while executing the test steps very carefully. Automation Testing refers to usage of automation tools that can execute your test suite. Automation software enters test data into the system under test. It is also responsible for comparing the expected and actual results so as to generate detailed test reports.

If you are planning to choose Automation testing for your product then you need to be prepared for the investments on resources and tools. The development of your product will need execution of same test suite until the final product is made. With the use of test automation tool, it becomes quite easy to record this suite while re-playing it as required by your product. There is no need of human intervention, once test suite is automated. This will eventually help in improving the ROI of Test Automation.

The main objective of Automation tool is to lessen number of test cases when compared with manual testing, hence not eliminating the manual testing all of a sudden.

Why Automated Testing, instead of Manual testing?

Following reasons makes Automation testing significant:

• Manual Testing of all work flows, all negative scenarios, all fieldsis very much costly and time consuming
• It is hard to test multi lingual sites manually.
• Automation tests do not need Human intervention. Automated test can be executed unattended (overnight).
• Automation rises test execution speed.
• Automation aids in Test Coverage increase.
• Manual Testing is quite boring, further leads to many errors

With Automation Testing, Which Test Cases need to Automate?

Following criterion can be used to select the Test cases that need to be automated, to increase the ROI of automation.

• Business Acute test cases which are at High Risk.
• Test cases which are executed repeatedly.
• Test Cases that difficult to perform manually and tedious.
• Test Cases which are very much time consuming.

Following criteria can’t be considered for test Automation:

• Test Cases whom requirements change frequently
• Test cases which are performed on ad-hoc basis
• Newly designed test cases which are not executed manually at once.

What is Automation Process?

Test tool selection:

Selection of the automation tool depends on the technology which the Application under test is built on. To explain with QTP, it does not support Informatica hence cannot be used for testing the Informatica applications. It is always better idea to conduct proof of concept of Tool on AUT.

Scope of Automation:

Scope of automation is defined as the extent of your Application under Test that will be automated. Following points aid in determining scope:

• Feature that are significant for the business.
• Scenarios having large amount of data.
• Common functionalities throughout applications.
• Technical possibility.
• Amount to which business components are reused.
• Complexity amongst test cases.
• Capability to use the same test cases for cross browser testing.

How are the Planning, Design and Development done?

This is the phase where you create Automation strategy & plan, that has following details-

• Selection of Automation tools.
• Design of Framework and its features.
• In-Scope and Out-of-scope items of automation.
• Prepared Automation test bed.
• Timeline and Schedule of execution and scripting.
• Deliverables of automation testing.

How Test Execution is done?

During this phase, Automation Scripts are executed. The scripts here require input test data; prior they are set to run. Once on complete execution, they provide detailed report.

There are multiple ways of carrying out the execution i.e. through Automation tool, build tool (Maven, Ant, Gradle etc), CI Tool (Teamcity, Jenkins etc) or through Test Management tool, which eventually invokes the automation tool.

For instance take example of QC which is generally referred as Quality Centre. It is basically a test management tool which eventually invokes QTP so as to execute automation scripts. You can execute the scripts on single machine or a group of machines. If you are short of time, then you may execute the scripts during night so that your time will be saved.

Maintenance

Automation Scripts need to be reviewed, added and maintained for each release cycle on addition of new functionalities of System under Test. Maintenance is indeed essential to increase efficiency of Automation Scripts. 

 About Selenium WebDriver

WebDriver is a library the assists us in interacting with the web browser same as humans would do. It is capable of executing tests on Firefox, Chrome, Safari, Internet Explorer, Ghost Driver and Opera deployed on any of Windows, OSX or Linux platform.

List of programming language supported for scripting is big. Some of the popular languages are Java, C#, Ruby, .Net, Python and Pearl

Java seems bit friendly to me, so in this post we will use that as our scripting weapon.

Selenium Webdriver Architecture

In simple words, initially code is written in any of the programming language using the webdriver client. It interacts with the webdriver api and finally command is sent to the browser driver wherein final action is performed.

Setting Up Java_Home

1. Install JDK from here
2. Set JAVA_HOME environment variable.

Value of JAVA_HOME will be the path to root directory of JDK.

Installing Eclipse

1. Download eclipse from here
2. You will get it in zip format, so unzip it to a locattion using 7Zip, Winrar etc
3. To launch eclipse, navigate to the extracted directory and double-click on eclipse.exe (On Windows) and eclipse.app (On Mac)

Creating first WebDriver project