Web Development is indeed one of the most high-paying jobs and is also in great demand. But building a website isn’t just enough, developers also have a team of testers who find bugs and try to rectify them. Bugs are obvious and hence, testing the software is needed. When it comes to testing, Selenium is one of the best tools to help developers with automation testing. Thus, the demand for Selenium testers is high and will also increase in the near future.
You’ll be surprised to know that the average salary of a Selenium tester is 7 LPA and it also ranges from 4 LPA to 15 LPA as per the experience. In this article, you’ll get to know everything that requires you to become a Selenium tester. But before that, let’s understand What is Selenium?
Selenium is an open-source tool and a suite of tools that can automate actions on web browsers. Each tool is to support specific automation. It supports scripting in 10 different programming languages like Ruby, Java, NodesJS, Python, PHP, and C#. The most important tools of selenium are Selenium IDE, Selenium WebDriver, and Selenium Grid.
Advantages of Using Selenium
Selenium is an open source. There is no licensing cost involved and it can be downloaded for free. It is becoming one of the most preferred web testing frameworks and also
- No Initial Investment.
- No need for Trained Programmers.
- Test Driver Development, Continuous Integration (CI), & Continuous Testing (CT)
Who is a Selenium Tester?
The work of a Selenium Tester depends on the role, company to another, from one project to another, and even also varies according to a year of experience. There are some standard responsibilities of a Selenium Tester.
- Understand the requirements and functionality of the client/user.
- Knowledge of Regression and Functional Testing.
- Knowledge of the Selenium suite of tools like Selenium IDE, Selenium Grid, and Selenium WebDriver.
- Test Automation Framework.
- Create Test cases and able to execute them.
- To fix errors, resolve queries if any also debug the test cases.
If you want or thinking of pursuing a career in the web testing field, then there are various Selenium career opportunities. Selenium helps developers with automating testing.
There are many Career Opportunities as a Selenium Developer:
- Automation Test Engineer
- QA Manager/REMOTE – (Automation/Selenium)
- SDET / QA Engineer
- Quality Assurance Selenium remote
- Senior Java SDET
- Test Engineer
- Selenium Automation Lead
- QA Analyst
You must have lots of questions pop up How to start? Where to start? What do we need to learn before beginning Selenium? In this article, we will discuss all these things in detail.
Roadmap to Learn Selenium
Learning Selenium is not that much difficult, it requires a good command is any of the programming languages and practice properly. So, To understand or before starting to learn Selenium you should have some good commands on any programming language, HTML, Unit testing, TestNg, and Framework to learn Selenium for Automation testing. Let’s discuss all these in more detail.
Step 1: Learn Any Programming Language – you should know basic knowledge about any programming language. Taking Java as an example. First, you should have a proper installation and setting up Eclipse for practice.
The first thing you need to learn is Core Java. So, you need to learn the following major topics:
- Class and Object
- Keywords, Variables, Identifiers, and Datatypes
- Operators
- Type Conversion
- Selection Control Structures – if, switch
- Iteration Control Structures
- Methods
- Constructors
- Memory Management
- OOPS Concepts (Inheritance, Encapsulation, Abstraction, Polymorphism)
- Access Modifiers
- Class Diagram
- String & Array
- Object and Wrapper Classes
- Exceptions
Some Advance Java concepts of Java need to cover to be aware of all these concepts along with basic concepts
- Collection Framework – A framework is a set of classes and interfaces which provide a ready-made architecture. To implement a new feature or a class, there is no need to define a framework.
- Local Date and Time – LocalDateTime in Java is used for displaying the local date and time on the output screen.
- Lambda Expressions and Stream – Java 8 introduced a host of new features, including lambda functions and streams.
- JDBC (Java Database Connectivity) – Java Database Connectivity is a Java API to connect and execute the query with the database
Step 2: IDE and Build Tools – Once you cover all the core and advanced java and start to practice therefore you must know the following IDE’s
Now all your java code is built. So, for building your Java project you must be aware of Maven (build tool).
Step 3: Learn DataBase Management System – Knowledge of Database Management System (DBMS) is good to go. Listed down all the important topics which need to cover before starting with Selenium
- Introduction to DBMS, Keys, and ER Diagram
- SQL Basics
- Normalization
- Functional Dependency
- DDL and DML Statements
- SQL Functions, Sorting
- Updating Data, Deleting Data, Case, Order By
- Grouping, Combining Data, and Cartesian Product
- Joins
Step 4: Learn Fundamentals of HTML – You should have basic knowledge and some practice, as while working with selenium You would need to find out locators of web elements like radio, links, text boxes, checkboxes, etc.
- Basic HTML Element
- Form with Table Element
- Anchor Element
- Media Element
- Audio and Video Element
- Text Formatting Element
Step 5: Know about Testing Basics and Testing Management – Knowledge about basic concepts of software testing that are to be understood by anyone who is going to work on a software testing project. List down some concepts
- The need for Software Testing
- Basics Concepts and Terminologies
- How Software Testing is Done
- Requirement Analysis Phase
- Test Planning and Design Phase
- Test Execution Phase
- Test Closure Phase
Step 6: Developing Persistence Layer of Enterprise Application using Hibernate – Hibernate Framework is a very popular persistence layer framework for developing Java enterprise applications.
Hibernate is a Java-based, open-source, Object Relational Mapping (ORM) framework.
- About Persistence Layer
- Object Rational Mapping
- Performing Hibernate CRUD (Create, Read, Update, Delete)
- Primary Key Generation Strategies
- Entity Mapping
- Criteria of API (Application Program Interface)
Step 7: Start with Selenium – Selenium is a suite of tools that can automate actions on web browsers. Each tool is developed to support a specific kind of automation approach. For more information do read Selenium Basics – Components, Features, Uses, and Limitations
There important tools that form the core of the Selenium ecosystem are:
- Selenium IDE
- Selenium WebDriver
- Selenium Grid
| Tools | Features of tools that are the core of Selenium |
|---|---|
| Selenium IDE |
|
| Selenium WebDriver |
|
| Selenium Grid |
|
Step 8: Selenium Basics – Start with learning Locators and WebDrivers.
There are many different ways to find web elements like ID, Name, Class Name, Link text, Partial Link text, CSS, and XPath.
You have to learn commands on WebDrivers and their real-time knowledge. Some commonly used WebDriver Like Google Chrome Driver, Internet Explorer Driver, Opera Driver, Safari Driver, and HTML Unit Driver
You can first target the simple things to learn Selenium Basics:
- WebDriver and Locators
- Browser Commands
- Get Commands
- Browser Navigation Commands
- Web Element Commands
- Select Dropdown Commands
- Actions Class
- Selenium Waits
- Take a Screenshot in Selenium
- Handle Alerts or Pop-ups
Step 9: Testing – Testing is the process of verifying and validating the functionality of an application to make sure that it works as per the requirements and does not have a bug/error. It is the responsibility of the developer to test the module or method that he/she has developed before the code is integrated with others’ code.
The most commonly used unit testing frameworks are JUnit and TestNG.
Step 10: Selenium Advance – Now move to learn advanced concepts to be better commanding in Selenium Framework. Learn the following components which will help you in creating a maintainable framework/script in Selenium.
i) Work with TestNG Framework – TestNG (Test Next Generation) is an open-source automated testing framework. It is similar to JUnit, but it is not a JUnit extension.
- Installation
- Annotations
- TestNG Assertions
ii) Enhance Test Scripts –
- XPath axes – An XPath expression is an alphanumeric pattern that returns a node or a set of nodes in the given XML/HTML document.
- SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) – SSL is a standard security protocol that is used to establish a secured connection between the server and the client end.
- JDBC (Java DataBase Connectivity)
iii) Log Reports using Log 4j – Apache Log 4j is a Java-based logging utility that is used for logging execution information.
- Logger
- Layout
- Appender
iv) Build Automation using Maven – Working with Maven is to build the project more automated and Independent.
v) Build triggers using Jenkins – Jenkins is an open-source continuous integration tool used on Windows, Linux, and Mac OS environments.
vi) Automation Framework – An automation framework is a combination of various guidelines, coding standards, project hierarchies, modularity, reporting mechanism, test data injections, etc. to pillar automation testing.
- Some concepts in the Automation Framework
- Create Test Cases
- Create and Execute Test Batches
- Tracking and Reporting Errors/Defects
- Regression Testing
vii) Cross-browser testing using Selenium Grid – Selenium grid is part of the selenium suite which distributes the test across multiple physical or virtual machines for the test scripts can be executed in parallel (Simultaneously). It helps us in covering the test process across browsers and different platforms.
Step 11: Practice – You should keep practicing all the above topics to understand the real-time implementation of selenium.
Some Selenium Practice Exercise
- Automate Google Search with Selenium.
- Login to Email using username and password automatically.
- Send an Email Automatically using Selenium.
- Automate Demo Web Table with Selenium.
Conclusion
In order to become a Software Development Engineer in Test (SDET). Selenium is the most necessary. Begin your journey in this field, you will keep growing. While working with Selenium Automation, upskill and keep yourself learning every day. Does not need much effort into learning new automation tools (Selenium), once you worked for 2-3 years in selenium.