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Web applications are growing more advanced as digital technologies keep evolving.
With new features andconstant updates, QA engineers face new hurdles as they thoroughly test web applications across platforms for functionality and reliability. It is where reliable tools such as Selenium come to your rescue. Selenium has become the world’s most popular web testing framework due to its powerful features and widespread acceptance across multiple browsers.
1. Test Early and Test Often
One of the best practices for Selenium test automation is to test early and often.This gave rise to the concept of shift left testing, this means to involve testers right from the requirement gathering phase. That way, they are able to come up with test cases in advance by understanding the expectations of the end-users.The primary idea here is to avoid encountering bugs after the development is done. Testers can provide their valuable input and help developers develop the product in a way that improves the user experience.
2. Consider Using a BDDFramework
BDD or Behavior DrivenDevelopment, is a popular development approach whileperformingSeleniumTest
Automation. BDD enables testers to write Selenium test automation cases in simple English which can be understood by anyone without coding knowledge. This further helps in creating a bridge between the business and technical team to understand what’s really happening in the project, overall creating better collaboration.
By writing your Selenium test automation scripts with BDD, you create specifications, which will help your team to understand the test and requirements in a much better way. This allows you to save time, as you won’t have to explain the test to any stakeholder as they are self-explanatory now.
3. Use Page Object Model
As the UI for a web application changes, so do the locators associated with it, with it all the tests need to be written again. But, there is a solution to this, by using Page Object Model, you don’t need to make changes to all your test scripts, again and again.
With POM you only need to change the page objects, as all the locators are in one central repository. In POM, every webpage has a separate page class, to find web elements on it as well as the page methods for these web elements. This makes the project more reliable as the developer doesn’t need to scan the whole code and test scripts, just to incorporate a few UI changes.
4. Designing Tests Prior To Automating Them
Before you begin to automate tests, creating scenarios and test cases in advance is a good practice. Diving straight into automation without a proper test design can prove to be dangerous. This is why a test design along with strategy and planning is necessary for Selenium test automation success. You need to develop test architecture describing the structure of the test program and how the test program will be managed.
5. Use the right locator
The locator is a crucial part of a Selenium script, and using the right one is essential for the test’s reliability. Selecting the right locator can make the script more efficient and less prone to flakiness. ID and name locators are usually the most reliable, and they offer faster execution than CSS and XPath locators.
6. Use the right wait
Web elements or pages may take a little time to load, and it is essential to give a specific wait time to the script to avoid failure. Selenium provides two types of waits: Implicit and Explicit waits. Both wait to halt the execution of the script until it finds the element. The difference is that Implicit wait applies globally to the whole script, and it can sometimes cause unnecessary delays, which can lead to slower test execution. While explicit wait only applies to specific web elements. It is also more precise and helps avoid unnecessary delays.
7. Incorporate the test-driven script
Writing Selenium tests are about testing the software on multiple data permutations and combinations. Therefore, Selenium tests should be data-driven, and multiple data points should drive all tests. A data-driven framework helps achieve this and allows tests to be easily maintained.
8. Validate tests using assertion
To write good tests, it is crucial to validate them. Selenium tests should be validated using assertions provided in frameworks like TestNG and Junit. Without assertions, the testing process is incomplete and does not validate the test build’s correctness. Selenium automation aims to reduce manual testing efforts, increase execution, and identify most bugs promptly.
However, to get the most out of their Selenium scripts, QAs must adhere to the above-mentioned Selenium best practices so that Selenium tests with Java can be reliable, efficient, and easily maintainable.
