Selenium Interview Questions and Answers

Answer: Automation testing or Test Automation is a process of automating the manual process to test the application/system under test. Automation testing involves use to a separate testing tool which lets you create test scripts which can be executed repeatedly and doesn’t require any manual intervention.

Answer: Benefits of Automation testing are: Supports execution of repeated test cases Aids in testing a large test matrix Enables parallel execution Encourages unattended execution Improves accuracy thereby reducing human generated errors Saves time and money

Answer: Selenium is free and open source have a large user base and helping communities have cross Browser compatibility (Firefox, chrome, Internet Explorer, Safari etc.) have great platform compatibility (Windows, Mac OS, Linux etc.) supports multiple programming languages (Java, C#, Ruby, Python, Pearl etc.) has fresh and regular repository developments supports distributed testing

Answer: Selenium is one of the most popular automated testing suites. Selenium is designed in a way to support and encourage automation testing of functional aspects of web based applications and a wide range of browsers and platforms. Due to its existence in the open source community, it has become one of the most accepted tools amongst the testing professionals. Selenium is not just a single tool or a utility, rather a package of several testing tools and for the same reason it is referred to as a Suite. Each of these tools is designed to cater different testing and test environment requirements. The suite package constitutes of the following sets ...

Answer: Selenium supports the following types of testing: Functional Testing Regression Testing

Answer: Following are the limitations of Selenium: Selenium supports testing of only web based applications Mobile applications cannot be tested using Selenium Captcha and Bar code readers cannot be tested using Selenium Reports can only be generated using third party tools like TestNG or Junit. As Selenium is a free tool, thus there is no ready vendor support though the user can find numerous helping communities. User is expected to possess prior programming language knowledge.

Answer: Selenium IDE is the simplest and easiest of all the tools within the Selenium Package. Its record and playback feature makes it exceptionally easy to learn with minimal acquaintances to any programming language. Selenium IDE is an ideal tool for a naïve user.

Answer: Selenese is the language which is used to write test scripts in Selenium IDE.

Answer: Locator can be termed as an address that identifies a web element uniquely within the webpage. Thus, to identify web elements accurately and precisely we have different types of locators in selenium. ID ClassName Name TagName LinkText PartialLinkText Xpath CSS Selector DOM

Answer: Assert: Assert command checks whether the given condition is true or false. Let’s say we assert whether the given element is present on the web page or not. If the condition is true then the program control will execute the next test step but if the condition is false, the execution would stop and no further test would be executed. Verify: Verify command also checks whether the given condition is true or false. Irrespective of the condition being true or false, the program execution doesn’t halts i.e. any failure during verification would not stop the execution and all the test steps would be executed.

Answer: xpath is used to locate a web element based on its XML path. XML stands for Extensible Markup Language and is used to store, organize and transport arbitrary data. It stores data in a key-value pair which is very much similar to HTML tags. Both being markup languages and since they fall under the same umbrella, Xpath can be used to locate HTML elements. The fundamental behind locating elements using Xpath is the traversing between various elements across the entire page and thus enabling a user to find an element with the reference of another element.

Answer: Single Slash “/” – Single slash is used to create Xpath with absolute path i.e. the xpath would be created to start selection from the document node/start node. Double Slash “//” - Double slash is used to create Xpath with relative path i.e. the xpath would be created to start selection from anywhere within the document.

Answer: The problem of same origin policy disallows to access the DOM of a document from an origin that is different from the origin we are trying to access the document. Origin is a sequential combination of scheme, host and port of the URL. For example, for a URL http:// http://www.softwaretestinghelp.com/resources/, the origin is a combination of http, softwaretestinghelp.com, 80 correspondingly. Thus the Selenium Core (JavaScript Program) cannot access the elements from an origin that is different from where it was launched. For Example, if I have launched the JavaScript Program from “http://www.softwaretestinghelp.com”, then I would ...

Answer: Selenium Grid can be used to execute same or different test scripts on multiple platforms and browsers concurrently so as to achieve distributed test execution, testing under different environments and saving execution time remarkably.

Answer: Selenium RC and WebDriver, in a combination are popularly known as Selenium 2. Selenium RC alone is also referred as Selenium 1.

Answer: WebDriver

Answer: The following syntax can be used to launch Browser:WebDriver driver = new FirefoxDriver();WebDriver driver = new ChromeDriver();WebDriver driver = new InternetExplorerDriver();

Answer: The different drivers available in WebDriver are: Firefox Driver InternetExplorerDriver ChromeDriver SafariDriver OperaDriver AndroidDriver IPhoneDriver HtmlUnitDriver

Answer: There are two types of waits available in WebDriver! Implicit Wait Explicit Wait Implicit Wait: Implicit waits are used to provide a default waiting time (say 30 seconds) between each consecutive test step/command across the entire test script. Thus, subsequent test step would only execute when the 30 seconds have elapsed after executing the previous test step/command. Explicit Wait: Explicit waits are used to halt the execution till the time a particular condition is met or the maximum time has elapsed. Unlike Implicit waits, explicit waits are applied for a particular instance only.

Answer: User can use sendKeys(“String to be entered”) to enter the string in the textbox. Syntax:WebElement username = drv.findElement(By.id(“Email”));// entering usernameusername.sendKeys(“sth”);

Answer: WebDriver facilitates the user with the following methods to check the visibility of the web elements. These web elements can be buttons, drop boxes, checkboxes, radio buttons, labels etc. isDisplayed() isSelected() isEnabled() Syntax: isDisplayed():boolean buttonPresence = driver.findElement(By.id(“gbqfba”)).isDisplayed(); isSelected():boolean buttonSelected = driver.findElement(By.id(“gbqfba”)).isDisplayed(); isEnabled():boolean searchIconEnabled = driver.findElement(By.id(“gbqfb”)).isEnabled();

Answer: Get command is used to retrieve the inner text of the specified web element. The command doesn’t require any parameter but returns a string value. It is also one of the extensively used commands for verification of messages, labels, errors etc displayed on the web pages. Syntax:String Text = driver.findElement(By.id(“Text”)).getText();

Answer: Value in the drop down can be selected using WebDriver’s Select class. Syntax: selectByValue:Select selectByValue = newSelect(driver.findElement(By.id(“SelectID_One”)));selectByValue.selectByValue(“greenvalue”); selectByVisibleText:Select selectByVisibleText = new Select (driver.findElement(By.id(“SelectID_Two”)));selectByVisibleText.selectByVisibleText(“Lime”); selectByIndex:Select selectByIndex = newSelect(driver.findElement(By.id(“SelectID_Three”)));selectByIndex.selectByIndex(2);

Answer: Following are the navigation commands:navigate().back() – The above command requires no parameters and takes back the user to the previous webpage in the web browser’s history. Sample code:driver.navigate().back(); navigate().forward() – This command lets the user to navigate to the next web page with reference to the browser’s history. Sample code:driver.navigate().forward(); navigate().refresh() – This command lets the user to refresh the current web page there by reloading all the web elements. Sample code:driver.navigate().refresh(); navigate().to() – This command lets the user ...

Answer: driver.findElement(By.linkText(“Google”)).click(); The command finds the element using link text and then click on that element and thus the user would be re-directed to the corresponding page. The above mentioned link can also be accessed by using the following command. driver.findElement(By.partialLinkText(“Goo”)).click(); The above command find the element based on the substring of the link provided in the parenthesis and thus partialLinkText() finds the web element with the specified substring and then clicks on it.

Answer: An inline frame acronym as iframe is used to insert another document with in the current HTML document or simply a web page into a web page by enabling nesting. Select iframe by iddriver.switchTo().frame(“ID of the frame“); Locating iframe using tagNamedriver.switchTo().frame(driver.findElements(By.tagName(“iframe”).get(0)); Locating iframe using index frame(index)driver.switchTo().frame(0);

Answer: findElement(): findElement() is used to find the first element in the current web page matching to the specified locator value. Take a note that only first matching element would be fetched. Syntax: WebElement element =driver.findElements(By.xpath(“//div[@id=’example’]//ul//li”));findElements(): findElements() is used to find all the elements in the current web page matching to the specified locator value. Take a note that all the matching elements would be fetched and stored in the list of WebElements. Syntax:List <WebElement> elementList =driver.findElements(By.xpath(“//div[@id=’example&rs...

Answer: close(): WebDriver’s close() method closes the web browser window that the user is currently working on or we can also say the window that is being currently accessed by the WebDriver. The command neither requires any parameter nor does is return any value. quit(): Unlike close() method, quit() method closes down all the windows that the program has opened. Same as close() method, the command neither requires any parameter nor does is return any value.

Answer: Selenium is an automation testing tool which supports only web application testing. Therefore, windows pop up cannot be handled using Selenium.

Answer: WebDriver offers the users with a very efficient way to handle these pop ups using Alert interface .There are the four methods that we would be using along with the Alert interface. void dismiss() – The accept() method clicks on the “Cancel” button as soon as the pop up window appears. void accept() – The accept() method clicks on the “Ok” button as soon as the pop up window appears. String getText() – The getText() method returns the text displayed on the alert box. void sendKeys(String stringToSend) – The sendKeys() method enters the specified string pattern into the alert box. Syntax:// ...

Answer: Selenium is an automation testing tool which supports only web application testing, that means, it doesn’t support testing of windows based applications. However Selenium alone can’t help the situation but along with some third party intervention, this problem can be overcome. There are several third party tools available for handling window based pop ups along with the selenium like AutoIT, Robot class etc.

Answer: //verify the title of the web pageassertTrue(“The title of the window is incorrect.”,driver.getTitle().equals(“Title of the page”));

Answer: The values of the css properties can be retrieved using a get() method: Syntax:driver.findElement(By.id(“id“)).getCssValue(“name of css attribute”);driver.findElement(By.id(“id“)).getCssValue(“font-size”);

Answer: Junitis a unit testing framework introduced by Apache. Junit is based on Java.

Answer: Following are the Junit Annotations: @Test: Annotation lets the system know that the method annotated as @Test is a test method. There can be multiple test methods in a single test script. @Before: Method annotated as @Before lets the system know that this method shall be executed every time before each of the test method. @After: Method annotated as @After lets the system know that this method shall be executed every time after each of the test method. @BeforeClass: Method annotated as @BeforeClass lets the system know that this method shall be executed once before any of the test method. @AfterClass: Method annotate...

Answer: Testing is an advance framework designed in a way to leverage the benefits by both the developers and testers. With the commencement of the frameworks, JUnit gained an enormous popularity across the Java applications, Java developers and Java testers with remarkably increasing the code quality. Despite being easy to use and straightforward, JUnit has its own limitations which give rise to the need of bringing TestNG into the picture. TestNG is an open source framework which is distributed under the Apache software License and is readily available for download. TestNG with WebDriver provides an efficient and effective test result format that c...

Answer: Framework is a constructive blend of various guidelines, coding standards, concepts, processes, practices, project hierarchies, modularity, reporting mechanism, test data injections etc. to pillar automation testing.

Answer: Advantage of  Test Automation framework Reusability of code Maximum coverage Recovery scenario Low cost maintenance Minimal manual intervention Easy Reporting

Answer: Below are the different types of frameworks: Module Based Testing Framework: The framework divides the entire “Application Under Test” into number of logical and isolated modules. For each module, we create a separate and independent test script. Thus, when these test scripts taken together builds a larger test script representing more than one module. Library Architecture Testing Framework: The basic fundamental behind the framework is to determine the common steps and group them into functions under a library and call those functions in the test scripts whenever required. Data Driven Testing Framework: Data Driven Test...

Answer: WebDriver cannot test Mobile applications. WebDriver is a web based testing tool, therefore applications on the mobile browsers can be tested.

Answer: No, captcha and bar code reader cannot be automated.

Answer: Object Repository is a term used to refer to the collection of web elements belonging to Application Under Test (AUT) along with their locator values. Thus, whenever the element is required within the script, the locator value can be populated from the Object Repository. Object Repository is used to store locators in a centralized location instead of hard coding them within the scripts. In Selenium, objects can be stored in an excel sheet which can be populated inside the script whenever required.

Answer: Web testing tools Selenium RC and WebDriver are consolidated in single tool in Selenium 2.0

Answer: For web based application testing selenium can be used The test types can be supported are a)      Functional b)      Regression For post release validation with continuous integration automation tool could be used a)      Jenkins b)      Hudson c)       Quick Build d)      CruiseCont

Answer: Single slash ‘/ ’ Single slash ( / ) start selection from the document node It allows you to create ‘absolute’ path expressions Double Slash ‘// ’ Double slash ( // ) start selection matching anywhere in the document It enables to create ‘relative’ path expressions

Answer: Technical challenges with Selenium are Selenium supports only web based applications It does not support the Bitmap comparison For any reporting related capabilities have to depend on third party tools No vendor support for tool compared to commercial tools like HP UFT As there is no object repository concept in Selenium, maintainability of objects becomes difficult

Answer: TypeKeys() will trigger JavaScript event in most of the cases whereas .type() won’t. Type key populates the value attribute using JavaScript whereas .typekeys() emulates like actual user typing

Answer: Assert:  Assert allows to check whether an element is on the page or not. The test will stop on the step failed, if the asserted element is not available. In other words, the test will terminated at the point where check fails. Verify: Verify command will check whether the element is on the page, if it is not then the test will carry on executing.  In verification, all the commands are going to run guaranteed even if any of test fails.