To become a successful software or website, a very important parameter is the user experience of that specific product. Because if the user will not find the product easy to handle, they may leave the website and will shift to another website which is a loss to the company. So, all organizations want to make their application or website seamless and user-friendly. Selenium is one such tool that is used to perform the test automation process. It is open-source and easy to use. In this article, we will discuss what Selenium is. What is Performance testing? and various aspects of it.
What is Selenium?
Selenium is an open-source framework that is used to perform testing for web applications and websites. Selenium can perform automation testing for websites and web applications for an assortment of browsers and working frameworks. This framework is a prior choice in the field of testing because it supports many programming languages such as Java, Python, JavaScript, C#, etc. Selenium permits the testing group to perform an iteration of the testing cycle in less time to mechanize the test cases, increasing testing productivity. And these features of Selenium make the testing process bug-free and error-free.
What is Performance Testing?
Performance testing is defined as the test of measuring a software testing process based on its speed, responsiveness, network stability, etc. The organization performs performance testing to check the bottlenecks of the performance. Performance testing aims to detect and nullify these bottlenecks of the testing process. This helps to make sure that the software or website that is under performance testing has good efficiency and the performance is improved.
Lack of performance testing may cause sluggish response times and inconsistent user and operating system interactions, which could have an impact on system performance. The result is a generally bad user experience. To ensure a better user experience, performance testing helps establish whether a produced system satisfies speed, responsiveness, and stability requirements under workloads.
Components of Selenium for Performance Testing
The various components of Selenium that we need to execute the performance testing for faster feedback for web applications are as follows:
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Selenium IDE
Selenium IDE (Integrated Development Environment) is the development tool that provides you with an interface where you can design your testing script. This IDE has many features designed for software testing, such as playback, using which you can record and browse all the interactions that you have done with the browser. Also, IDE helps you to develop your testing code using various programming languages, such as Java, Python, etc., just by downloading an extension file for a specific language.
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Selenium RC (Remote Control)
It is a controlling tool that comes inside the Selenium suite. This is used to write complex testing codes using databases, exceptions, and many more. It also helps you to identify any test cases that are failing, and you can report it further to the support team.
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Selenium Grid
With the help of Selenium Grid, you can run several test scripts on various machines at once. It consists of a hub server and numerous grid nodes, with the hub acting as a conduit for commands to reach the registered nodes.
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Selenium WebDriver
Selenium WebDriver allows the tester to communicate directly with the browser for the testing process, and it is controlled from the operating system (OS) level. You can create and execute the test cases using it.
Using Selenium for parallel testing, one can fully exploit the potential of test frameworks. A cloud-based platform like LambdaTest proves immensely beneficial in this regard. LambdaTest serves as an AI-powered test orchestration and test execution platform, enabling parallel test execution for Selenium, thus boosting testing efficiency.
With access to over 3000 browsers and OS combinations, it facilitates the simultaneous running of multiple tests, thereby reducing test time and expediting the software release cycle. By utilizing LambdaTest’s Selenium online Grid, you can easily scale Selenium tests, leading to expanded test coverage and a faster feedback loop.
Advantages of Selenium for Performance Testing
Here are some of the advantages of Selenium for performance testing:
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Language Support.
When you use the Selenium framework, you do not need to worry about the programming language for it. Because Selenium supports a diverse range of programming languages such as C++, Python, Java, etc., apart from it, Selenium also supports high-end programming languages such as Ruby, Pearl, C#, etc. The tester can develop the testing scripts using their preferred programming languages, and Selenium will convert them into Selenium-compatible code in very less time.
- Open Source
One of the reasons Selenium is the most preferred testing tool is due to its open availability for free. There are no upfront costs for the maintenance and monitoring of Selenium. In this way, the money is saved, and you can use it for other business purposes. It also provides you the option to customize and manipulate the code to improve the functionalities and working of existing functions and classes.
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Operating System Support
Since you cannot restrict the clients to use a specific type of operating system. Hence, you want to use a testing framework that is compatible with many operating systems. Selenium is the best option for this as it supports many operating systems such as Windows, macOS, Linux, etc. It provides you the option to design the test cases in an operating system, say Windows, and execute them in another type of operating system like macOS and Linux. This portability of Selenium is one of the major reasons for its popularity.
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Easy Implementation and Management
It is not a fun process to automate testing cases across many web applications, browsers, and operating systems. Selenium provides a user-friendly interface to make creating and running test scripts simple and efficient. Selenium commands are broken down into many classes, which makes them simpler to comprehend and use. Users can view while tests are being done from within browsers. Selenium’s reporting features are a big reason why it’s so well-liked in the QA community because they let testers extract the results and take action on them.
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Extensions and Plugins
Selenium comes with an extensive range of extensions and plugins. Using these, the testers can work with third-party bindings to improve the efficiency and performance of the testing process. There are options to integrate Selenium with Appium and Selendroid plugins too. Apart from this, you can also integrate with CI/CD (Continuous Integration/ Continuous Delivery) tools such as Eclipse and Jenkins, which gives many advantages in the Agile development process.
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Browser Support
Since you cannot restrict the clients to use a specific type of browser, hence, you want to use a testing framework that is compatible with many browsers. Selenium is the best option for this as it supports many browsers such as Chrome, Safari, Firefox, and many more. This helps to save lots of time, and you can work seamlessly without worrying about browser compatibility.
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Testing Scope
There are huge options for the testing scope in Selenium, such as hybrid testing, mobile applications, web application testing, and many more. Also, you can perform testing across many devices and types of their software, such as Android, iOS, etc. Specifically for mobile application testing, there are options to choose Appium and Selendroid. Selendroid is for Android applications, but Appium has options for both Android and iPhone applications.
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Automation and Parallel Test Execution
Using Selenium to perform the testing process parallelly reduces test execution time. Executing parallel testing is what makes software testing productive and effective, though, along with those other factors. For instance, if you were to run a test case that takes 10 minutes to complete in parallel, it would only take 10 minutes to complete the task of testing a combination of 10 distinct browsers and devices. So, using the concept of parallel testing by using the Selenium grid helps to test the browser on a large number of web browsers. Also, it helps to run multiple test cases parallelly on different browsers in very less time.
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CI/CD Integration
Involving third-party tools and frameworks in the testing process adds a wider scope of testing using Selenium. There are many CI/CD tools, such as Jenkins, Maven, and Docker, that can be easily integrated with the Selenium framework, and you can utilize them to make the testing process of the software better.
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Community and Team Collaboration
As we know, Selenium is an open-source tool, and it has great community support for users. The community of Selenium is always there to help you in case of any need. Apart from this, the active community team always works to find and fix any errors in Selenium. There is a good presence of developers and testers in the community that continuously helps you to increase the functionalities and features of your software. Also, there is a huge availability of online research papers and tutorials about Selenium on the internet.
Conclusion
Selenium is an open-source framework that is used to perform automation testing for web applications and websites. It can perform automation testing for websites and web applications for a variety of browsers and operating systems. Performance testing is defined as the test of measuring a software testing process based on its speed, responsiveness, network stability, etc. The various components of Selenium that we need for performance testing for web applications are Selenium IDE, Selenium WebDriver, Selenium Grid, and Selenium RC. There are many advantages of using Selenium for performance testing, such as it is open-source and it supports many programming languages and operating systems.
Also, it is compatible with many types of web browsers. Using Selenium for performance testing of web applications, you can increase the scope of the testing; you get various plugin supports and many more features. Hope you get the idea of how we can use Selenium for Performance Testing with Selenium for Faster Feedback on Web Application Performance.
