I can see that since selenium 2.0, WebDriver and Selenium RC are packaged together for download. Now I primarily use WebDriver, but can I bring in Selenium RC in my testing scripts from now and then? Is there anything that Selenium RC is capable of but WebDriver is not, or vice versa?
You should probably start your research here (though you may have already gone over this): http://seleniumhq.org/docs/03_webdriver.html
I'll assume you're contrasting Selenium-RC to WebDriver, Selenium-IDE really isn't in the same ballpark.
Selenium uses JavaScript to automate web pages. This lets it interact very tightly with web content, and was one of the first automation tools to support Ajax and other heavily dynamic pages. However, this also means Selenium runs inside the JavaScript sandbox. This means you need to run the Selenium-RC server to get around the same-origin policy, which can sometimes cause issues with browser setup.
WebDriver on the other hand uses native automation from each language. While this means it takes longer to support new browsers/languages, it does offer a much closer 'feel' to the browser. If you're happy with WebDriver, stick with it, it's the future. There are limitations and bugs right now, but if they're not stopping you, go for it.
Selenium Benefits over WebDriver
Supports many browsers and many languages, WebDriver needs native implementations for each new language/browser combo.
Very mature and complete API
Currently (Sept 2010) supports JavaScript alerts and confirms better
Benefits of WebDriver Compared to Selenium
Native automation faster and a little less prone to error and browser configuration
Does not require Selenium-RC Server to be running
Access to headless HTMLUnit can allow tests to run very fast
Great API
I see this is an old question but found this is on the Selenium HQ home page:
Selenium WebDriver is the successor of Selenium Remote Control which
has been officially deprecated. The Selenium Server (used by both
WebDriver and Remote Control) now also includes built-in grid
capabilities.
So it's settled :-)
The biggest difference is RC runs from a vs, 2.0 uses Webdriver and launches the browser, instead of using a vs. In order to you RC in 2.0, check here: http://seleniumhq.org/docs/09_webdriver.html#emulating-selenium-rc
I dont know how to take 2.0 into RC though, but were do you see they are packaged together? They are two different products. Selenium 2 is webdriver, and Selenium RC is Selenium 1.
Personally, I found 2.0 a lot easier to program with. Plus by the end of the year Javascript alert support should be implemented, which is a huge plus!
Related
What is Selenium?
When you open the official page of the Selenium, the first thing you read is "Selenium automates browser" in "What is Selenium?" section.
The section "Which part of Selenium is appropriate for me?" below offers the choice between Selenium WebDriver and Selenium IDE.
From this, I deduce that Selenium is a collection of tools and the collection comprises IDE, WebDriver API(language binding), Grid, Selenium Standalone Server, browser driver. One has to download the appropriate ones to build a project.
What is WebDriver?
WebDriver is an API. It is written in more than one language which and they are called language bindings. The API has functions to control a browser. You use the functions in writing a script that controls a browser in the way(test case) you want.
This is what I know. Please correct me wherever I'm wrong. I want to know the answers to the two questions in the interview point of view.
Selenium
Selenium is a free (open source) automated testing suite for web applications across different browsers and platforms. Primarily it is used for automating web applications for testing purposes, but is certainly not limited to just that. Selenium has the support of all of the major browser vendors who have taken (or are taking) steps to make Selenium a native part of their browser. It is also the core technology in countless other browser automation tools, APIs and frameworks.
Selenium is not just a single tool but a set of different software tools each with a different approach to support the test automation of an organization. From a broader perspective previously it had four components as follows:
Selenium Integrated Development Environment (IDE)
Selenium Remote Control (RC)
WebDriver
Selenium Grid
An year ago, Selenium RC and WebDriver are merged into a single framework to form Selenium 2.x. Perhaps, Selenium 1 refers to Selenium RC. The current released version is Selenium 3.x.
WebDriver
Selenium-RC worked the same way for each supported browser. It injected javascript functions into the browser when the browser was loaded and then used its javascript to drive the AUT within the browser. Selenium WebDriver fits in the same role as Selenium-RC did and has incorporated the original 1.x bindings and included the WebDriver API. It refers to both the language bindings and the implementations of the individual browser controlling code. This is commonly referred to as just WebDriver. In short, WebDriver is the remote control interface that enables introspection and control of user agents. WebDriver provides a platform and language-neutral wire protocol as a way for out-of-process programs to remotely instruct the behavior of web browsers.
Highlights of WebDriver
WebDriver is designed in a simpler and more concise programming interface along with addressing some limitations in the Selenium-RC API.
WebDriver is a compact Object Oriented API when compared to Selenium1.0
It drives the browser much more effectively and overcomes the limitations of Selenium 1.x which affected our functional test coverage, like the file upload or download, pop-ups and dialogs barrier
WebDriver overcomes the limitation of Selenium RC's Single Host origin policy.
Current Implementation
WebDriver is the name of the key interface against which tests should be written in Java/C#/Ruby/Python/NodeJS, the implementing classes which you can use are listed as below:
ChromeDriver
EventFiringWebDriver
FirefoxDriver
HtmlUnitDriver
InternetExplorerDriver
PhantomJSDriver
RemoteWebDriver
SafariDriver
What is Selenium
It is a suite of tools that can be used to automate web browsers testing.
Each tool serves different purpose.
List of tools:
Selenium IDE
Selenium RC
WebDriver
Selenium Grid
Selenium RC was merged with WebDriver since Selenium 2
What is WebDriver
Selenium WebDriver is an interface that permits us to execute tests over browsers.
Selenium WebDriver allows us to choose a programming language of your choice to create test scripts.
Please find the image below explaining how exactly WebDriver communicates with the browser :
What is Selenium?
Selenium is a framework where scripts are written to run and execute webDriver which in turn controls browser.
What is WebDriver?
WebDriver is an API, the name itself suggests driving the web browser or controlling the web browser by using libraries and commands.
The one and only job of WebDriver is to control the browser, it doesn't know anything about testing and how to interact with browser, At this point FrameWork comes into picture where Scripts are written to run and execute WebDriver.
What is Selenium?
You can say it is a web application automation framework.
What is WebDriver?
This is certainly an API but to understand easily you can think it as a library collection.
I think it's also worth noting that the WebDriver controls the browser, and that Selenium is the piece that sends/receives method calls and data from/to the driver using the "wire protocol" that the WebDriver creates. So the WebDriver is the bridge from the browser to any other code that wants to communicate with it. Selenium also provides an interface (in the coding sense...) that is standard across different WebDrivers. So when you declare a WebDriver type it is implementing the interface. (This is my current understanding anyway and I'm always learning something new!)
I have been using selenium webdriver as my main method to do functional tests. So far its been working greate with our product.
I need to do some performance and/or load tests on the website, I was wondering if there is a tool that would incorporate my selenium tests or a tool which i can use with the recorded tests as the base.
Currently i am using selenium webdriver with C#
Any help is appreciated.
Given you have tests written in C# the most obvious way would be using Visual Studio Load Testing capabilities.
If you are looking for a free and open-source solution I would recommend going for Apache JMeter. JMeter has integration with Selenium via WebDriver Sampler plugin so you should be able to run your Selenium tests in multi-threaded manner. However you will need to convert your C# code into one of the WebDriver Sampler supported languages (default is JavaScript)
Remember that Selenium tests are very resource-intensive as real browsers consume a lot of CPU/RAM so the number of virtual users you will be able to mimic this way will be very limited. So recommended approach is creating main load on a HTTP protocol level and use one Selenium instance to check rendering speed while your application is under the load.
You can install WebDriver Sampler plugin using JMeter Plugins Manager.
Why do you need to run full browsers. HTTP layer tests are far simpler? You also should be looking at only a subset of business processes in performance which generate a preponderance of load.
Which one of the following should be preferred for automating web project
Selenium IDE
Selenium WebDriver
I want to automate web application and this question is creating hell of confusion in my mind
First of all Selenium IDE is only for Firefox browser where as Selenium WebDriver will work in all kinds of browsers.
selenium IDE should be considered if you have very little knowledge on coding and your requirement is to create play-back recorded scripts. also if u have small size web app and with low maintenance scope then go for selenium IDE.
If your web app is dynamic with lots of test cases and you are sure that maintenance will be required then go for selenium web driver. For that you will require good programming language knowledge.
Let me know if this helps.
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I am trying to understand testing framework better and been looking into Selenium. I've used HTMLUnit before, mainly when I needed to scrape some information off website or the likes.
In the context of writing test automation, what's the advantage / disadvantages of Selenium vs HTMLUnit? Looks to me Selenium is more complicated to set up than HTMLUnit, although at the same time there's a HTMLUnitDriver for Selenium which I think behave the exact same way as in HTMLUnit itself?
Selenium obviously provides more robust framework, it has the Selenium RC for pararel testing, it also has different browser drivers that can be used - although when you used the browser drivers, the test will actually open/close a browser application rather than headless.
May be I am not understanding Selenium correctly. Some directions and pointers would be great!
On another note - a separate question - I am also looking at doing automated testing on mobile browser, I see that Selenium has an IPhoneDriver for it, but then this is not a headless testing either as it requires actual iOS simulator.
Is there anyway to do headless testing on mobile sites? Would changing user-agent be sufficient? I've seen a couple posts around changing user-agent that seem to have their own challenges, eg. Set user-agent in Selenium RC
Thanks a lot!
well, would try to explain differences in detail.
Speaking about parallel testing, it better to use selenium grid.
Basic concept of selenium RC and selenium grid.
You can get into more details here
Some words about selenium webDriver:
The primary new feature in Selenium 2.0 is the integration of the WebDriver API. WebDriver is designed to providing an simpler, more concise programming interface along with addressing some limitations in the Selenium-RC API. Selenium-WebDriver was developed to better support dynamic web pages where elements of a page may change without the page itself being reloaded. WebDriver’s goal is to supply a well-designed object-oriented API that provides improved support for modern advanced web-app testing problems.
How Does WebDriver ‘Drive’ the Browser Compared to Selenium-RC?
Selenium-WebDriver makes direct calls to the browser using each browser’s native support for automation. How these direct calls are made, and the features they support depends on the browser you are using. Information on each ‘browser driver’ is provided later in this chapter.
For those familiar with Selenium-RC, this is quite different from what you are used to. Selenium-RC worked the same way for each supported browser. It ‘injected’ javascript functions into the browser when the browser was loaded and then used its javascript to drive the AUT within the browser. WebDriver does not use this technique. Again, it drives the browser directly using the browser’s built in support for automation.
WebDriver and the Selenium-Server
You may, or may not, need the Selenium Server, depending on how you intend to use Selenium-WebDriver. If you will be only using the WebDriver API you do not need the Selenium-Server. If your browser and tests will all run on the same machine, and your tests only use the WebDriver API, then you do not need to run the Selenium-Server; WebDriver will run the browser directly.
There are some reasons though to use the Selenium-Server with Selenium-WebDriver.
You are using Selenium-Grid to distribute your tests over multiple
machines or virtual machines (VMs).
You want to connect to a remote machine that has a particular browser
version that is not on your current machine.
You are not using the Java bindings (i.e. Python, C#, or Ruby) and
would like to use HtmlUnit Driver
Selenium-WebDriver’s Drivers
WebDriver is the name of the key interface against which tests should be written, but there are several implementations. These include:
HtmlUnit Driver
This is currently the fastest and most lightweight implementation of WebDriver. As the name suggests, this is based on HtmlUnit. HtmlUnit is a java based implementation of a WebBrowser without a GUI. For any language binding (other than java) the Selenium Server is required to use this driver.
Pros
Fastest implementation of WebDriver
A pure Java solution and so it is platform independent.
Supports JavaScript
Cons
Emulates other browsers’ JavaScript behaviour (see below)
JavaScript in the HtmlUnit Driver
None of the popular browsers uses the JavaScript engine used by HtmlUnit (Rhino). If you test JavaScript using HtmlUnit the results may differ significantly from those browsers.
When we say “JavaScript” we actually mean “JavaScript and the DOM”. Although the DOM is defined by the W3C each browser has its own quirks and differences in their implementation of the DOM and in how JavaScript interacts with it. HtmlUnit has an impressively complete implementation of the DOM and has good support for using JavaScript, but it is no different from any other browser: it has its own quirks and differences from both the W3C standard and the DOM implementations of the major browsers, despite its ability to mimic other browsers.
With WebDriver, we had to make a choice; do we enable HtmlUnit’s JavaScript capabilities and run the risk of teams running into problems that only manifest themselves there, or do we leave JavaScript disabled, knowing that there are more and more sites that rely on JavaScript? We took the conservative approach, and by default have disabled support when we use HtmlUnit. With each release of both WebDriver and HtmlUnit, we reassess this decision: we hope to enable JavaScript by default on the HtmlUnit at some point.
To investigate deeper into webDriver's setUp see this
From HtmlUnit documentation:
HtmlUnit is not a generic unit testing framework. It is specifically a way to simulate a browser for testing purposes and is intended to be used within another testing framework such as JUnit or TestNG.
So to conclude Selenium and HtmlUnit difference:
HtmlUnit is a java based implementation of a WebBrowser without a GUI and a way to simulate a browser for testing purposes and Selenium-WebDriver makes direct calls to the browser using each browser’s native support for automation. we can see that HtmlUnit provides API without GUI possibility for automation whereas WebDriver provides internal browsers' possibilities for automation.
Speaking about mobile automation,
Selenium also has an iPhone Driver
iPhone Driver wiki article
and Android Driver
Android Driver wiki article
See also this presentation
Unfortunately I can not give you my working experience evaluation of mobile drivers as I deal with web automation (no mobile). Also know that Cucumber (automation tool) is popular among mobile automators.
see this and this.
Hope it come a lil bit more clear for you now =)
Selenium and HTMLUnit are somewhat similar in concept, but Selenium is more mature/robust and has a lot more features.
Note that Selenium encompasses the recording (IDE) plugin for Firefox, which allows you to record tests and the RC/WebDriver automation framework which essentially drives a browser. The two can be used together to make test creation very easy.
The only advantage I could see to using HTMLUnit is that it is less resource intensive, so you could potentially run tests on less hardware, but with Selenium's parallel support even that isn't really true anymore.
When running tests from Jenkins overnight, you typically have no access to a windowing system such as X11 or Windows in which to run the web browser. I therefore see a benefit of using the HTMLUnit web driver in that case since it doesn't require access to a windowing system.
In my experience, HtmlUnit does a fine job with browsing automation, but might get a bit buggy when dealing with Javascript. I actually came to a case in which I wasn't able to automate an image download with HtmlUnit, and had to turn to Selenium, which performed beyond my expectations. The case is actually registered in an SO thread.
I have used Selenium WebDriver for automation.
There is a very easy method to causing the browser to be headless.
Simply apply ChromeOptions (In my case, other DriverOptions are available)
ChromeOptions("Headless")
There are many proficient methods that can come from using Options or Services, as another example
This will stop the Driver/CommandPrompt window from 'appearing' so it will remain 'silent' and unexposed.
ChromeDriverServices ("Silent")
At least at UX systems you can use for example Xvfb and point the browsers to that display to make them "headless"
See also http://infiniteundo.com/post/54014422873/headless-selenium-testing-with-firefox-and-xvfb
or How do I run Selenium in Xvfb?
I'm not sure I quite understand the difference. WebDriver API also directly controls the browser of choice. When should you use selenium remote control (selenium RC) instead ?
Right now, my current situation is I am testing a web application by writing a suite with Selenium WebDriver API and letting it run on my computer. The tests are taking longer and longer to complete, so I have been searching for ways to run the tests on a Linux server.
If I use Selenium Remote Control, does this mean I have to rewrite everything I wrote with WebDriver API?
I am getting confused with Selenium Grid, Hudson, Selenium RC. I found a Selenium Grid plugin for Hudson, but not sure if this includes Selenium RC.
Am I taking the correct route? I envision the following architecture:
Hudson running on few Ubuntu dedicated servers.
Hudson running with Xvnc & Selenium Grid plugin. (Do I need to install Firefox separately ?)
Selenium grid running selenium RC test suites.
I think this is far more time efficient than running test on my current working desktop computer with WebDriver API.
WebDriver is now Selenium 2. The Selenium and WebDriver code bases are being merged. WebDriver gets over a number of issues that Selenium has and Selenium gets over a number of issues that Webdriver has.
If you have written your tests in Selenium one you don't have to rewrite them to work with Selenium 2. We, the core developers, have written it so that you create a browser instance and inject that into Selenium and your Selenium 1 tests will work in Selenium 2. I have put an example below for you.
// You may use any WebDriver implementation. Firefox is used here as an example
WebDriver driver = new FirefoxDriver();
// A "base url", used by selenium to resolve relative URLs
String baseUrl = "http://www.google.com";
// Create the Selenium implementation
Selenium selenium = new WebDriverBackedSelenium(driver, baseUrl);
// Perform actions with selenium
selenium.open("http://www.google.com");
selenium.type("name=q", "cheese");
selenium.click("name=btnG");
Selenium 2 unfortunately has not been put into Selenium 2 but it shouldn't be too long until it has been added since we are hoping to reach beta in the next couple of months.
As far as I understand, Webdriver implementation started little later than Selenium RC. From my point of view, WebDriver is more flexible solution, which fixed some annoying problems of SeleniumRC.
WebDriver provides standard interface for testing web GUI. There are several implementations of this interface (HTTP, browser-specific and based on Selenium). Since you already have some WebDriver tests, you must be familiar with basic docs like this
The tests are getting longer and longer to complete, so I have been searching for ways to run the tests on a linux server.
Did you try to find actual bottlenecks? I'm not sure, that elimination of WebDriver layer will help. I think, most time is spent on Selenium commands sending and HTTP requests to system-under-test.
If I use sleneium remote control, does
this mean I have to rewrite everything
I wrote with WebDriver API ?
Generally, yes. If you did not implement some additional layer between tests code and WebDriver.
As for Selenium Grid:
You may start several Selenium RC instances on several different [virtual] nodes, then register them in Selenium Grid. Your tests connect to Selenium Grid, and it redirects all commands to SeleniumRC instances, coordinating them in accordance with required browsers.
For details of hudson plugin you may find more info here