Automated Functional Testing: Types and Tools

In this era of digitalization, there is a plethora of software and mobile apps that are launched and upgraded regularly. Each software or app should provide a good first impression on the users without sacrificing the quality of the product. It is crucial to define a software testing strategy that can help you to present a bug-free software or app. 

This will make a long-lasting impression on the users and satisfy their requirements. Generally, all the software applications are written as web-based applications to facilitate their functioning in a better net browser. 

Each organization follows various testing methodologies, hence the effectiveness of testing these applications also differs from organization to organization. 

Organizations need to have an effective functional software testing plan to ensure that their products meet the requirements of the clients. This will help to produce software that meets the expected end-user results.

What is Functional Testing?

Functional testing is the process of testing the software application as per the requirements of the clients. It is conducted to ensure that all the attributes of the software are functioning as expected. Functional testing is executed based on the users’ perspective because the users are now vertically focused. 

Testing helps to confirm optimum coverage and minimize the risk of potential bugs. The process of functional testing includes black-box testing, where quality assurance experts aim at maintaining software functionality without testing the internal code structure. 

Hence, this testing focuses on software requirements and specifications. This means that the structure of the system is not considered and only the behavior and functionality of the modules are verified. Functional testing is crucial for any software because it verifies whether the software is ready for release or not.

What is Selenium and Functional Testing Types

Selenium is a web testing tool that automates browsers. This means that it uses the scripts to run tests directly within a browser. Selenium also helps to write tests in several popular programming languages like Java, Python, Ruby, C#, Groovy, PHP, and Perl. 

It facilitates this by providing a test domain-specific language like Selenese. You can run the tests on modern web browsers using selenium. It can work on Linux, Macintosh platforms, and Windows.

Extensive features of Selenium:

1. Supports cross-browser testing.
2. Open-source.
3. Multi-browser support.
4. Multiplatform support.
5. Multiple programming language support.

Why Use Selenium for Functional Testing?

In this era of intense competition and responsive software processes, enterprises face challenges to improve the performance and resolve issues of the software. Many organizations also adopt agile methodologies to meet the requirements of their clients. 

Test automation is the cornerstone of agile development and it has become a requirement for software projects. Test automation is a process of using the software tool to run repeatable tests against the application to be tested. It provides responsiveness for regression testing. 

You can save the high cost of automation testing tools by using selenium. It is an open-source testing tool available for free. It has an infinite reach and unlimited capabilities for test automation. Unlike other tools, you can easily download selenium directly from its website. Now you should know the meaning of selenium testing as well.

Automated Functional Testing Using Selenium

Selenium is a combination of four different tools namely selenium RC, selenium Grid, Selenium IDE, and Selenium WebDriver. We can use all these tools according to their functionality to test the Web app. Selenium also offers a client-server structure that includes the server and client components. 

The client component includes the WebDriver API and RemoteWebdriver. WebDriver API is used to create test scripts to interact with the application elements. Whereas, the RemoteWebdriver is used to communicate with the remote selenium server. 

The selenium server also includes a server component for receiving requests. The WebDriver API runs tests against selenium grid and web browsers to test browser capabilities and functionalities.

You can execute automated functional testing with selenium using the following steps-

1. Create a WebDriver test case.
2. Visit the specific web page for testing.
3. Search for the HTML element for testing on the web page.
4. Run action on the HTML instance.
5. Wait for the browser response to the action.
6. Run tests and record the output using a test framework.
7. Conclude the test.

How to Get Expertise in Selenium?

The official website of selenium is the best source available to learn it. Initially, you should learn any one of the programming languages like Java, Python, C#, etc. Then, you can learn how to design an effective automation framework and discover various mechanisms to locate web elements. 

You should also know the basic and advanced concepts of WebDriver. In the end, you can acquire a deep understanding and knowledge of each concept through practical code examples.

Summing Up

Selenium helps to perform regression testing and repetitive functional testing. Each organization wants to reduce their manual testing costs and can use selenium for this purpose. This automation testing tool helps to prevent repeated manual work and receive faster feedback. 

By reducing the cost of manual testing, you can also save time on running tests repeatedly and thus, ensure that the tests are executed consistently to meet the users’ expectations. The free cost of selenium makes it available to a huge section of the public as they can download it directly from its website.

Selenium can be used by various persons like-

1. Developers- The developers can use selenium for “browser” regression testing and replacing HTTP or HTML units in some cases.
2. Users- The users may include functional testers, developers, or business analysts. Once they get familiar with the keyword repository, they can create automated keyword scripts using Script Editor or MS Excel.
3. Quality assurance professionals- Quality assurance professionals use automated functional testing to enhance or perform cross-browser testing and regression testing on all platforms. Quality assurance can cover different types of functional testing, like system, smoke, integration, sanity, etc. It also includes acceptance testing using selenium until that has a GUI interface.

We hope this article has been beneficial to you!

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