Features of Selenium WebDriver – Benefits of Selenium WebDriver

WebDriver is used for the automation of web application testing so that it works as per the end user’s perspective. It is platform-independent as the same code works on all the major OS like Windows, macOS, and UNIX.

WebDriver is one of the significant components of the Selenium, which also includes the Selenium RC, Selenium Grid, SIDE, and Selenium Json Client API. So, let’s have a look at some of the features of Selenium WebDriver.

Features of Selenium WebDriver

Below are various benefits of selenium webdriver:

1. Multi-Browser Compatibility

WebDriver interacts with the web applications and its web elements in a browser, just like a real user with the use of a browser native support to hit direct calls without using any other intermittent device or software.

It supports mostly all the web browsers, which includes IE, Safari, Chrome, Firefox, Opera, and Edge. You can launch any browser with the help of easy commands. Selenium WebDriver also supports the iPhoneDriver, HTMLUnitDriver, and AndroidDriver.

2. Multiple Language Support

WebDriver supports most of the programming languages like JavaScript, PHP, Java, Python, C#, Perl, Ruby, etc. It also provides us with the freedom to choose any of the programming languages to write our own set of automation test scripts.

It also allows using a more efficient way of writing automation scripts like using conditional statements, switch statements, decision making statements to strengthen the automation script and make it capable of handling all the situations.

3. Speed and Performance

WebDriver test cases execute faster when compared to the other tools of the Selenium suite. Unlike the Selenium Remote Control, it directly communicates with the browser without the need for any other intermediate server.

4. Handling of Dynamic Web Elements

Dynamic handling of web elements is one of the most common issues at the time of performing automation testing. WebDriver knows how to handle the dynamic web element better like alerts, dropdowns, checkboxes, uploading files, etc.

It is very easy to locate web elements with the help of an ID, class, name, XPath, etc.

WebDriver uses some of the below methods to handle the dynamic elements:

• Contains(): This function of WebDriver has the ability to find an element with the help of a partial text and can also be used to handle the dynamic elements.
• Absolute XPath(): This is the most commonly used Xpath to handle any of the dynamic web elements, and it contains the complete set of paths of the web UI automation starting from the root node.
• StartsWith(): This function is based on matching and finding the starting text of the supplied attribute of dynamic elements.

5. Easy to Identify and use web elements

WebDriver has various locators that can be very helpful in finding the web elements on the web application. With this, it becomes highly easier for the testers to implement those elements in the test automation suite.

Some of the most used locators are:

• Name
• ClassName
• ID
• TagName
• LinkText
• PartialLinkText
• Xpath
• CSS Selector

6. Mouse Cursor and Keyboard Simulation

A major feature of the WebDriver is that it can mimic a real user scenario by handling the keyboard and mouse events. The Application Program Interface consists of the action classes, which are required when those events are needed to be executed.

You can automate simple scenarios like the keypress event, mouse click as well as complex events like multiple item selection, drag and drop, click and hold, etc.

7. Community Support

The support for the Selenium WebDriver is a community forum based, thus enabling regular upgrades and updates too. All the updates are easily available and do not require any of the specific training. Thus, this makes WebDriver, a budget-friendly tool.

8. Open Source and Portable

The major benefit of the Selenium WebDriver is that it is portable and open source. It can be downloaded directly from the Selenium official website easily.

9. Works On different OS

WebDriver supports different Operating Systems like Mac, Linux, UNIX, as well as for Windows. Selenium WebDriver scripts created can work on different platforms and OS.

10. Add-ons and Reusability

The scripts written with the help of a Selenium WebDriver supports the browser compatibility testing. The add-ons plugins can be customized which widens the scope of testing an application.

11. Simple Commands

There are various commands used in the WebDriver, which are very easy to implement. For example, to launch a browser in the WebDriver you can use the below command:

WebDriver driver = new ChromeDriver(); (Chrome browser)

12. Reduce test execution time

WebDriver helps to reduce the test execution time, which makes the execution faster and more reliable.

13. No server installation required

Selenium WebDriver does not require the installation of the server, as test scripts interact directly with the browser.

14. WebDriver- Methods and Classes

Selenium WebDriver offers several solutions to cope with some of the potential challenges in automation testing. It allows the testers to deal with some of the complex web elements such as alerts, radio buttons, dropdown, and checkboxes via dynamic locators.

15. Supports Multiple Frameworks

Selenium WebDriver can be easily integrated with the several frameworks like the ANT or Maven for compiling the source code.

16. Cross-Device Testing

Selenium WebDriver supports automation of test scripts across the various devices, which can be BlackBerry, Android, and iPhones.

Conclusion

So finally we have seen features of selenium webdriver. Selenium WebDriver is one of the powerful tools in the toolkit of Selenium. It is an extended version of Selenium Remote Control with various other benefits.

WebDriver also comes up with support for many platforms and browsers, unlike the IDE. WebDriver also does not require that the Server can be started before running the test scripts, just like the RC.