In case of Selenium automation testing, there are certain practices which developers must take into account and there are some pitfalls which they need to avoid in order to get best out of the efforts. This article discusses some of the best and recommended practices for Selenium automation testing and also shed light on some of the common pitfalls which developers need to avoid for the smooth execution and better results.

Use of BDD framework

BDD stands for Behavior Driven Development. This strategy aims at writing down test cases in the English language so that any one either technical or non-technical person can understand and participate in the designing of test cases.

This strategy serves as a bridge between business and technical persons since it brings down the business needs and technical feasibility and possibilities on a single platform thus resulting in better growth of business. In comparison to TDD (test driven development) BDD have an edge over them because BDD are being designed keeping business centric approach and specifications.

Use of Sleep commands should be avoided

There are numerous factors that become the cause of delay in loading of content over the web like access location, speed of network, capabilities of devices and a lot more.

In addition to these latencies or delays, adding a delay purposely via sleep call will worsen the condition. The sleep call delays the loading of content for a definite number of seconds but it is also not necessary that it will wait that definite number of seconds. This could be possible that the web content does not load even after the specific mentioned number of seconds. In order to deal with this difficulty, it is better to execute wait commands instead of sleep calls.

Selenium provides implicit wait and explicit wait commands to handle the situation much efficiently The explicit wait command provided by Selenium is used to alter the script execution for a specified duration.

Similarly, the implicit wait halts the execution for a definite number of seconds but it depends on the loading of the element, if it gets loaded within less time the script won’t wait for the mentioned time and automatically gets executed. 

Use of POM (Page Object Model)

The usage of Page Object Model is recommended while writing Selenium automation scripts. It is because there are chances when any update or change is required in the scripts henceforth the change needs to be updated at multiple places in the scripts. This is where the role of Page Object Model (POM) comes in. It makes the Selenium automation scripts manageable and eliminates the code redundancy.

The POM creates a database of objects for controls over the web page due to which every web page that is being tested has a separate page object class. This resulted in the ease of managing Selenium automation scripts since now the scripts do not directly manipulate web page elements rather there exist a page object layer between test code and controls over the web page.

Generation of Selenium Test Automation Reports

The Selenium test automation reports become quite important in order to keep track regarding the performance of tests since they become essentially useful and important in the maintenance of test data. The manageability of tests becomes quite easier since these reports help developers or testers to find out where the script is failing.

Lambda Test is one of the leading cloud testing platforms that enables developers and testers to test their Selenium scripts over a cloud based Selenium grid that provides support to more than 3000+ browsers and operating systems. Furthermore, you can also run parallel tests to speed up your release cycles.

Use of Parallel Testing in Selenium 

The usage of Parallel Testing in Selenium is a major feature because of which parallel testing is recommended. The parallel testing enables execution of same tests on multiple environments i.e. combination of operating systems, browsers and emulators.

Pitfalls to avoid in Selenium Automation Testing

Here is some pitfalls to avoid during Selenium automation testing.

Avoid the usage of CAPTCHA

The CAPTCHA or “Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart” is normally used to check the presence of human beings in the concerned action. In other words, the tool is used to avoid automation. Since captcha is a challenge for testers in Selenium automation testing that’s why it is always recommended to avoid the usage of CAPTCHA in Selenium automation script.

Selenium should be avoided in Web Crawling

Web Crawling is normally used for the extraction of information in a systematic manner. The Selenium script is not suitable for performing this job of extraction since it requires time to startup and takes a considerable amount of time in execution. Therefore it is good to utilize crawling tools like beautiful soup for the purpose of extraction instead of Selenium automation tools.

Avoid Two-Factor Authentication in testing environment

It is advisable to avoid the usage of 2FA (Two-Factor Authentication) in Selenium automation scripts. Since 2FA is used as an authentication mechanism in order to detect the authenticity of the user, therefore during the testing environment it is recommended to eliminate this authentication mechanism and this can also be achieved by disabling 2FA for users by configuring test machines for a family of IP addresses.

Test Dependency should be avoided

Although parallelism helps in reduction of execution time, the sequence of execution is not guaranteed in it. Therefore it is considered better for developers to avoid the inter-dependency in test cases. The test case designed in Selenium automation scripts must be autonomous instead of interdependence in nature. The autonomous Selenium scripts increase reliability.

Selenium Automation script for Performance Testing — NO

The performance of mobile apps includes a lot of factors like speed at which HTTP server response is received, browser execution speed and a lot more that is outside the capacity of testers. Since Selenium is preferably suitable for automation testing, it is not recommended for optimization tasks like performance testing instead some ready-made tools should be utilized for the said purpose.

Demerit in File Downloading   

Normally, the download is prompted by the user by clicking on a link over any web platform and the same content gets downloaded. Automating this task in Selenium causes the download functionality to get into blur condition since it wouldn’t be known to developers or testers whether the download functionality is tested or not. Also, in case of testing UI (user interaction), file download mechanism is not the prime concern, rather it should be passed as a HTTP request library.

Conclusion

The article discusses some of the major factors that should be considered in Selenium automation testing and also suggests some pitfalls to avoid in order for the smooth execution of mobile app testing.