Selenium automation testing interview questions and answers

Selenium automation testing interview questions and answers Q #1) What is Automation Testing? Automation testing or Test Automation is a process of automating the manual process to test the application/system under test. Automation testing involves the use of a separate testing tool which lets you create test scripts which can be executed repeatedly and doesn’t require any manual intervention. Q #2) What are the benefits of Automation Testing? Benefits of Automation testing are: 1. Supports execution of repeated test cases 2. Aids in testing a large test matrix 3. Enables parallel execution 4. Encourages unattended execution 5. Improves accuracy thereby reducing human-generated errors 6. Saves time and money Q #3) Why should Selenium be selected as a test tool? Selenium 1. is a free and open source 2. have a large user base and helping communities 3. have cross Browser compatibility (Firefox, Chrome, Internet Explorer, Safari etc.) 4. have great platform compatibility (Windows, Mac OS, Linux etc.) 5. supports multiple programming languages (Java, C#, Ruby, Python, Pearl etc.) 6. has fresh and regular repository developments 7. supports distributed testing Q #4) What is Selenium? What are the different Selenium components? Selenium is one of the most popular automated testing suites. Selenium is designed in a way to support and encourage automation testing of functional aspects of web-based applications and a wide range of browsers and platforms. Due to its existence in the open source community, it has become one of the most accepted tools amongst the testing professionals. Selenium is not just a single tool or a utility, rather a package of several testing tools and for the same reason, it is referred to as a Suite. Each of these tools is designed to cater different testing and test environment requirements. The suite package constitutes the following sets of tools: • Selenium Integrated Development Environment (IDE) – Selenium IDE is a record and playback tool. It is distributed as a Firefox Plugin. • Selenium Remote Control (RC) – Selenium RC is a server that allows a user to create test scripts in the desired programming language. It also allows executing test scripts within the large spectrum of browsers. • Selenium WebDriver – WebDriver is a different tool altogether that has various advantages over Selenium RC. WebDriver directly communicates with the web browser and uses its native compatibility to automate. • Selenium Grid – Selenium Grid is used to distribute your test execution on multiple platforms and environments concurrently. Q #5) What are the testing types that can be supported by Selenium? Selenium supports the following types of testing: 1. Functional Testing 2. Regression Testing Q #6) What are the limitations of Selenium? Following are the limitations of Selenium: • Selenium supports testing of only web-based applications • Mobile applications cannot be tested using Selenium • Captcha and Barcode readers cannot be tested using Selenium • Reports can only be generated using third-party tools like TestNG or JUnit. • As Selenium is a free tool, thus there is no ready vendor support through the user can find numerous helping communities. • The user is expected to possess prior programming language knowledge. Q #7) What is the difference between Selenium IDE, Selenium RC, and WebDriver? Feature Selenium IDE Selenium RC WebDriver Browser Compatibility Selenium IDE comes as a Firefox plugin, thus it supports only Firefox Selenium RC supports a varied range of versions of Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, Internet Explorer and Opera. WebDriver supports a varied range of versions of Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, Internet Explorer and Opera. Also supports HtmlUnitDriver which is a GUI less or headless browser. Record and Playback Selenium IDE supports record and playback feature Selenium RC doesn't supports record and playback feature. WebDriver doesn't support record and playback feature Server Requirement Selenium IDE doesn't require any server to be started before executing the test scripts Selenium RC requires server to be started before executing the test scripts. WebDriver doesn't require any server to be started before executing the test scripts Architecture Selenium IDE is a Javascript based framework Selenium RC is a JavaScript based Framework. WebDriver uses the browser's native compatibility to automation Object Oriented Selenium IDE is not an object oriented tool Selenium RC is semi object oriented tool. WebDriver is a purely object oriented tool Dynamic Finders (for locating web elements on a webpage) Selenium IDE doesn't support dynamic finders Selenium RC doesn't support dynamic finders. WebDriver supports dynamic finders Handling Alerts, Navigations, Dropdowns Selenium IDE doesn't explicitly provides aids to handle alerts, navigations, dropdowns Selenium RC doesn't explicitly provides aids to handle alerts, navigations, dropdowns. WebDriver offers a wide range of utilities and classes that helps in handling alerts, navigations, and dropdowns efficiently and effectively. WAP (iPhone/Android) Testing Selenium IDE doesn't support testing of iPhone/Andriod applications Selenium RC doesn't support testing of iPhone/Android applications. WebDriver is designed in a way to efficiently support testing of iPhone/Android applications. The tool comes with a large range of drivers for WAP based testing. For example, AndroidDriver, iPhoneDriver Listener Support Selenium IDE doesn't support listeners Selenium RC doesn't support listeners. WebDriver supports the implementation of Listeners Speed Selenium IDE is fast as it is plugged in with the web-browser that launches the test. Thus, the IDE and browser communicates directly Selenium RC is slower than WebDriver as it doesn't communicates directly with the browser; rather it sends selenese commands over to Selenium Core which in turn communicates with the browser. WebDriver communicates directly with the web browsers. Thus making it much faster. Q #8) When should I use Selenium IDE? Selenium IDE is the simplest and easiest of all the tools within the Selenium Package. Its record and playback feature makes it exceptionally easy to learn with minimal acquaintances to any programming language. Selenium IDE is an ideal tool for a naïve user. Q #9) What is Selenese? Selenese is the language which is used to write test scripts in Selenium IDE. Q #10) What are the different types of locators in Selenium? The locator can be termed as an address that identifies a web element uniquely within the webpage. Thus, to identify web elements accurately and precisely we have different types of locators in Selenium: • ID • ClassName • Name • TagName • LinkText • PartialLinkText • Xpath • CSS Selector • DOM Q #11) What is the difference between assert and verify commands? Assert: Assert command checks whether the given condition is true or false. Let’s say we assert whether the given element is present on the web page or not. If the condition is true then the program control will execute the next test step but if the condition is false, the execution would stop and no further test would be executed. Verify: Verify command also checks whether the given condition is true or false. Irrespective of the condition being true or false, the program execution doesn’t halt i.e. any failure during verification would not stop the execution and all the test steps would be executed. Q #12) What is an XPath? XPath is used to locate a web element based on its XML path. XML stands for Extensible Markup Language and is used to store, organize and transport arbitrary data. It stores data in a key-value pair which is very much similar to HTML tags. Both being markup languages and since they fall under the same umbrella, XPath can be used to locate HTML elements. The fundamental behind locating elements using XPath is the traversing between various elements across the entire page and thus enabling a user to find an element with the reference of another element. Q #13) What is the difference between “/” and “//” in Xpath? Single Slash “/” – Single slash is used to create Xpath with absolute path i.e. the xpath would be created to start selection from the document node/start node. Double Slash “//” – Double slash is used to create Xpath with relative path i.e. the xpath would be created to start selection from anywhere within the document. Q #14) What is Same origin policy and how it can be handled? The problem of same origin policy disallows to access the DOM of a document from an origin that is different from the origin we are trying to access the document. Origin is a sequential combination of scheme, host, and port of the URL. For example, for a URL Thus the Selenium Core (JavaScript Program) cannot access the elements from an origin that is different from where it was launched. For Example, if I have launched the JavaScript Program from “”, then I would be able to access the pages within the same domain such as “ So, In order to handle the same origin policy, Selenium Remote Control was introduced. Q #15) When should I use Selenium Grid? Selenium Grid can be used to execute same or different test scripts on multiple platforms and browsers concurrently so as to achieve distributed test execution, testing under different environments and saving execution time remarkably. Q #16) What do we mean by Selenium 1 and Selenium 2? Selenium RC and WebDriver, in a combination, are popularly known as Selenium 2. Selenium RC alone is also referred to as Selenium 1. Q #17) Which is the latest Selenium tool? WebDriver Q #18) How do I launch the browser using WebDriver? The following syntax can be used to launch Browser: WebDriver driver = new FirefoxDriver(); WebDriver driver = new ChromeDriver(); WebDriver driver = new InternetExplorerDriver(); Q #19) What are the different types of Drivers available in WebDriver? The different drivers available in WebDriver are: • FirefoxDriver • InternetExplorerDriver • ChromeDriver • SafariDriver • OperaDriver • AndroidDriver • IPhoneDriver • HtmlUnitDriver Q #20) What are the different types of waits available in WebDriver? There are two types of waits available in WebDriver: 1. Implicit Wait 2. Explicit Wait