A Complete Tutorial of Selenium WebDriver

There needs to be something in place to pick out mistakes to ensure a high-quality product as an excuse for producing a compromised product, no company can use manual error. For software development companies, software testing is an important solution to this issue. 

You might opt to manually conduct cross-browser testing, but if a newer version of the automated browser on which the test is conducted’ is released, the test process will eventually hit a roadblock. It becomes difficult to test Opera because all the resources are already putting their attention on testing other browsers, and it’s fresh and not to forget the legacy versions.

Luckily, for different browsers and programming languages, Selenium is there to help us conduct automated browser testing. With this blog, browser automation with Selenium and Python, we will go through the specifics of how you can perform test automation in Opera. To help us run our Selenium testing scripts over the Opera browsers, we will be using the Opera WebDriver.

We must look at browser automation with Selenium WebDriver, the core component of the Selenium test system before we begin Selenium test automation on Opera with Selenium and Python browser automation.

Selenium WebDriver

The main benefit of using the Selenium WebDriver for Selenium test automation is that a browser-specific driver is used to communicate with the underlying browser. The corresponding WebDriver will be used by each browser to communicate with the browser on which the tests are carried out. Any upgrade to the version/features of the browser will therefore only require support for certain new features installed on the test machine in the WebDriver.

The Selenium WebDriver approach is different from the Selenium IDE (GUI based Firefox plugin for playback and record testing) and Selenium Remote Control (standalone Java software for running HTML test suites) approach. You can get started with cross-browser testing with Selenium once the Selenium WebDriver for the corresponding web browser is on your machine.

Selenium WebDriver: Blocks of Primary Development

Four main blocks constitute the Selenium WebDriver—

Selenium Client Libraries

Selenium Client Libraries, also known as Selenium Language Bindings, are most capable of supplying computer languages with multi-language assistance. For computer languages like C #, Java, Ruby, Python, Perl, etc., there are Selenium Client Libraries.

JSON Wire Protocol

The JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) Wire Protocol is an Application Programming Interface (API) based on REST (Representational State Transfer) that is responsible for coordinating data transmission in the WebDriver architecture among different blocks.

Automated Browser Drivers

Selenium interacts with the web automated browser via the corresponding browser driver, as described in the previous section. This ensures that web browser modifications (features, versions, etc.) do not trigger the test code introduced for Selenium automated testing to be disabled. Web browsers are like a black box to the Selenium framework because of the browser drivers.

Browsers

This is the real browser where the research is carried out. Selenium Python Browser Automation is not feasible on a web browser for which there is no Browser Engine. If the current test implementation fails after a browser update, it is strongly recommended to first check if a modified version of the WebDriver is already present for that specific browser.

Limitations of Selenium WebDriver

While the usage of the Selenium WebDriver for Opera Selenium Python has numerous benefits, there are also a few limitations. Below are some of the most popular drawbacks of using the Selenium WebDriver for Python browser automation:

No testing support for Windows-based applications

Selenium WebDriver is commonly used to evaluate software related to the web, such as websites, web apps, etc. It does not, however, support testing of applications based on Windows or local applications.

Minimum In-built Mobile Application Testing Support

When addressing web-related application testing, it should also include testing on portable devices, such as mobile phones, tablets, etc. There is no support for testing on mobile devices for the Standalone Selenium framework; you, therefore, need to download modules/libraries that can promote that support. It is better to switch to a cross-browser testing platform on the cloud to make the task of Selenium test automation more effective, as it can be more affordable & portable.

CAPTCHA Handling 

There is no way of automating the handling of CAPTCHA in Selenium. CAPTCHA’s entire purpose on any website / web-app is to prevent the submission of forms by bots and minimize the possibility of malicious attacks. You may want to by-pass that choice in some instances, particularly when you are testing the product. 

Without the installation/support of third party modules/libraries, Automating Opera with Selenium Python does not automate CAPTCHA handling. Besides, these modules/libraries do not guarantee 100 percent precision either.

No full-fledged confirmation

In monitoring the Selenium test automation process, automated browser testing reports can be instrumental. The information gained from these reports can be used in future projects for test preparation and to increase the accuracy of the test/test coverage in current projects. The native Selenium reporting role is limited.

To achieve better reporting, you can need to use third-party modules/libraries, e.g. the HTML module may be used in the system while using Selenium Opera and Python for Selenium test automation.

Dynamic Page-Loads Handling

Nowadays, websites make heavy use of AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) to asynchronously retrieve data from the server. This prevents the whole web page from being reloaded when just a few web elements on the web page change. The dynamically-loaded elements cannot be able to recognize scripts written in Selenium.

Using Wait (Implicit or Explicit) or Sleep with a specified period is the only way to handle such scenarios so that the Opera Selenium Python script has sufficient time to recognize the web feature. Instead of serial testing and downloading third-party modules/libraries that can do the corresponding job, these deficiencies can be reduced by switching to a test environment that supports parallel testing.

In Automated Browser testing any form of product that falls into the web category, cross-browser testing plays an important role. While 100 percent test automation is unlikely, for web browsers with a large user base, cross-platform Python browser automation should be considered. Opera Selenium Python research will offer limited results for browsers like Opera that do not have complete adoption.