Selenium’s powerful open-source features and adoption across multiple browsers make it an exceptionally useful tool for browser automation. It allows the running of automated tests in multiple programming languages against browsers and devices by using a cloud Selenium Grid. And since Selenium tests have become an indispensable part of the software testing pipeline, it makes sense to outline a few best practices.
Correct Usage of Locators
Selenium automates user actions by interacting with the browser to navigate, click, type, and run operations to check objects within the DOM. Interacting with each web element requires identifying those elements, using Locators in Selenium.
Selenium Locators are of numerous types:
Class
ID
Link Text
Tag Name
XPath
Selecting the right locator can make a test script flexible and offer a greater chance of success.
Use Data-Driven Testing
Data-Driven testing allows testers to use the same test and the same code for different input types and values. When combined with Selenium, it allows devs and QAs to insert modifications. Consequently, this can be used for system functional testing and browser compatibility testing.
Choose the Selector Order
In degrees of their difficulty of use, Selenium locators stand in the following order: XPath < CSS < Links Text < Name < ID. Start with ID in the test code and make XPath the last selector.
Use Page Objects
Page Objects help create robust frameworks by resisting minor UI tweaks. They also help to separate test code and page code. It ensures that services are not spread throughout the test but rather that there is a repository for all services offered by the page.
Use Selenium Waits. Avoid Thread.Sleep
Instead of sleep, use Selenium Wait commands. When Thread.sleep() is used, the code will pause for the specified period of time, no matter what. However, with the Implicit Wait command, Selenium polls the DOM until an element is found or a condition is fulfilled. Its time is, by default, set to zero.
Automation testing with Selenium is a good way to create a stable, true, and reliable UI automation process. However, always pair Selenium tests with a multitude of real browsers and devices. Without being run in real user conditions, the result of any tests run will be inconclusive at best. Use a real device cloud to access thousands of real browsers and devices for testing purposes.
