Selenium is one of the most trending tools
currently in the market for automated cross browser testing of web applications.
There is no specific guideline for implementing Selenium, however, there are
several methodologies that can be followed to successfully leverage the
features of Selenium.
Evaluate
the Standards of the Organization:
For implementing a new software practice in
an organization, the new software tool needs to be tested in terms economic and
technical feasibility for the organization.
Before implementing Selenium, its pros and
cons should be well evaluated against the organization’s requirements.
Selenium is only used to test web
applications. The entire coverage provided by Selenium testing should be documented and well communicated to the team who will
be using it.
Selenium supports a large set of popular
programming languages. However, if the implementation team uses a programming
language that is not supported by Selenium, they will experience difficulties
in the transition.
Implementing
a Framework
The most naive way to use Selenium is to
code a script for each test. This may seem as a very potential way of achieving
full test coverage. But this same methodology may lead to future standstills
due to a number of reasons. Tests should
stable, consistent, easily understandable and that which can be changed easily.
This requires a framework to be in place. While implementing a framework can be
time consuming, it will pay off enormously in the future.
Code
Standardization
Conforming to an existing naming and
documentation convention is an important aspect of any automation process. It
is equally important to develop codes that can be reused. It can be a
constructive initiative to train the automation developers on the fundamentals
of software development techniques.
Externalization
of the Configuration
The most common failure in software
automation is when a new software build is released, the already developed
automation scripts fail to test them successfully. To avoid such
inconsistencies, the automated tests should be consistent and adaptable. This
can be achieved in the following ways:
-
Making the automation
self-aware by anticipating dynamic functionalities and accommodating them
whenever possible.
-
Configurable values should be
exposed whenever possible. A majority of the maintenance issues is caused by
tweaking object identification. This is because Selenium provides no object
identification strategy at all.
-
The naming conventions and the
other coding standards should be strictly followed. A failure to adhere to these conventions may
lead to hours of debugging efforts.
-
Hard coding can seem easy and
is mainly practiced by the ignorant or novice programmers. Specifying fixed
values which are potentially configurable in the future, call for changes in
the code for maintenance in the future.
Logging and
Reporting
Logs and reports help to determine the pass
or failure of tests, determine test coverage, debug test scripts, collect the
debug report and access screen captures as well. Selenium lacks in logging and
reporting. Without results and reports, test automation is of no use.
While implementing these features, the best
approach is to separate the concept of logging and reporting. Logging should be
reserved for technical details while reports serve better as HTML or other
portable readable format. Reports should also contain the execution details of
the test cases and the environment in which they were run.
The client will always ask for the test
report and it should be ensured that the test automation
serves its purpose for which it was implemented in the first place.
Conclusion:
Which part of the application needs to be
tested, the user expectations, project timeline, priorities determined by the
project managers are contributing factors in determining the implementation
practices. Thus, the best implementation practices for Selenium may be
different for different projects and requires careful consideration of all the
aspects.
