This post is the first in a series of & quot; Getting Started with Selenium Testing & quot; posts from Dave Haeffner, a famous expert on Selenium and automated testing, and a frequent contributor to the Sauce blog and Selenium community. This serial is for those who are brand new to test automation with Selenium and a new chapter will be posted every Tuesday for the next two month.

The First Thing You Need To Know

Selenium is a package robot sent from the future to help us test web application. But keep in mind that it & # x27; s not one of those fancy shape-shifting robots than can run really tight. Instead it & # x27; s more like one of those really potent robots that & # x27; s not very fast and is best accommodate for fulfil a certain objective. That is to say -- Selenium is really good at a specific set of things. If you know what those are and stick to them then you will be able to easily write reliable, scalable, and maintainable trial that you and your squad can trust. But before we go too much farther, there are a few things you & # x27; ll want to get sorted prior to writing your first test.

Define a Test Strategy

A great way to increase your luck of automated web testing success is to focus your efforts by mapping out a testing strategy. The best way to do that is to answer four questions: 1. How does your business make money (or generate value for the end-user)? 2. How do your users use your application? 3. What browsers are your exploiter apply? 4. What things have broken in the application before?

After answering these, you should have an understanding of the functionality and browsers that matter most for the application you are testing. This will help you narrow down your effort to the things that weigh most. After answer these enquiry, you should also be able to progress a prioritized reserve of critical business functionality, a short tilt of browsers to focus on, and an savvy of the risky parts of your application to see out for. With it, you should be able to make sure you are on the correct track -focusing on things that subject for the occupation and its users.

Pick a Programming Language

In order to work well with Selenium, you involve to choose a programming words to publish your espousal tests in. Conventional wisdom will state you to choose the same speech as what the application is written in. That way if you get stuck you can ask the developers on your team for help. But if you & # x27; re not proficient in this language (or new to ontogeny), then your progress will be slow and you & # x27; ll likely end up asking for more developer help than they have time for -- hindering your automation exploit and setting you up for failure.

A great way to find which speech to go with is to reply one simple question:Who will own the automated tests?

As you are considering which language to go with, view what open source frameworks already exist for the languages you are eyeing. Going with one will relieve you a lot of clip and give you a horde of functionality out of the box that you would otherwise hold to build and preserve yourself -- and it & # x27; s FREE. Here & # x27; s a little leaning of open source Selenium WebDriver frameworks and their respective language (sorted alphabetically):

• ChemistryKit (Ruby)

  For autonomous testing across multiple user personas, check out SUSATest — it explores your app like 10 different real users.

• Geb (Groovy)

• Robot Framework

• Saunter (Python and PHP)

• wd (JavaScript)

Choosing a programming language for machine-driven testing is not a decision that should be taken lightly. If you & # x27; re simply starting out (or looking to port your test) then considering and discourse these things will help position you for outstanding success.

Choose an Editor

In order to publish codification, you will need to use some kind of an editor (e.g., text editor, or integrated development surround). There areplentyto choose from. Here are some of the more popular ones I & # x27; ve run into:

• Vim

• Emacs

• Sublime Text

• IntelliJ

It & # x27; s important to pluck an editor that works for you and make you productive. So if you & # x27; re new to program and text editors, so it & # x27; s probably best to go with something more intuitive like Sublime Text or IntelliJ.

Dave is the author of Elemental Selenium (a costless, erst weekly Selenium tip newsletter that is read by hundreds of testing professionals) as good as a new volume, The Selenium Guidebook. He is also the creator and upholder ofChemistryKit(an open-source Selenium framework). He has helped numerous companionship successfully implement automatize acceptation quiz; including The Motley Fool, ManTech International, Sittercity, and Animoto. He is a founder and co-organizer of theSelenium Hangoutand has talk at numerous conferences and meetups about acceptance testing.