1) What is test automation or automation testing?

Automation testing uses automation tools to write and execute test cases, no manual involvement is
necessary for executing an automated test suite. Testers prefer automation tools to write test scripts
and test cases and then group into test suites.

Automation testing enables the use of specialized tools to automate the execution of manually
designed test cases without any human intervention. Automation testing tools can access the test
data, controls the execution of tests and compares the actual result against the expected result.
Consequently, generating detailed test reports of the system under test.

Selenium Interview Questions

2) What are the advantages of automation testing?

Some basic Advantages of automation testing are as follows.

Automation testing supports both functional and performance test on an application.

It supports the execution of repeated test cases.

It facilitates parallel execution.

It aids in testing a large test matrix.

It improves accuracy because there are no chances of human errors.

It saves time and money.

3) Name some of the commonly used Automation Testing tools that are used for Functional
Automation.

Lists of top 10 used automation testing tools for Functional Automation are as follows.

Teleric Test Studio, Developed by Teleric.

TestingWhiz

HPE Unified Functional Testing (HP - UFT formerly QTP)

Tosca Testsuite

Watir

Quick Test Professional, provided by HP.

Rational Robot, provided by IBM.

Coded UI, provided by Microsoft.

Selenium, open source.

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4) Name some of the commonly used Automation Testing tools that are used for Non-Functional
Automation.

Lists of some commonly used Automation Testing tools for Non-Functional Automation are as
follows.

Load Runner, provided by Hp.

JMeter, provided by Apache.

Burp Suite, provided by PortSwigger.

Acunetix, provided by Acunetix.

5) What is Selenium?

Selenium is a portable framework for software testing. Selenium tool facilitates with a playback tool
for authoring functional tests without the need to learn a test scripting language.

Selenium is one of the most widely used open source Web UI (User Interface) automation testing
suite. Jason Huggins developed Selenium in 2004 as an internal tool at Thought Works. Selenium
supports automation across different browsers, platforms, and programming languages.

6) What are the different components of Selenium?

Selenium is not just a single tool but a suite of software's, each having a different approach to
support automation testing. It comprises of four major components which include:

Selenium Integrated Development Environment (IDE)

Selenium Remote Control (Now Deprecated)

WebDriver

Selenium Grid

7) List out the names of programming languages, browsers and operating systems that are
supported by Selenium.

Selenium supports various operating systems, browsers and programming languages. Following is
the list:

Programming Languages: C#, Java, Python, PHP, Ruby, Perl, JavaScript.

Operating Systems: Android, iOS, Windows, Linux, Mac, Solaris.

8) What are the significant changes/upgrades in various Selenium versions?

Selenium v1.0:

Version 1.0 was the initial release of Selenium.

It included three tools: Selenium IDE, Selenium RC, and Selenium Grid.

Selenium v2.0:

Selenium WebDriver was introduced replacing Selenium RC in version "2.0".

With the onset of WebDriver, RC got deprecated and moved to the legacy package.

Selenium v3:

The latest release Selenium 3 has new added features and functionalities.

It includes Selenium IDE, Selenium WebDriver, and Selenium Grid.

9) List some of the test types that are supported by Selenium.

Different types of testing's that we can achieve through Selenium are.

Functional Testing

Regression Testing

Sanity Testing

Smoke Testing

Responsive Testing

Cross Browser Testing

UI testing (black box)

Integration Testing

10) What is Selenium IDE?

Selenium IDE is implemented as Firefox extension which provides record and playback functionality
on test scripts. It allows testers to export recorded scripts in many languages like HTML, Java, Ruby,
RSpec, Python, C#, JUnit and TestNG.

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Selenium IDE has limited scope, and the generated test scripts are not very robust, and portable.
11) What do you mean by Selenese?

Selenium commands, also known as "Selenese" are the set of commands used in Selenium that run
your tests. For example, command - open (URL); launches the desired URL in the specified browser
and it accept both relative and absolute URLs.

A sequence of Selenium commands (Selenese) together is known as a test script.

12) What are the different ways of locating a web element in Selenium?

In Selenium, web elements are identified and located with the help of Locators. Locators specify a
target location which uniquely defines the web element in the context of a web application. 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

13) How many types of WebDriver API's are available in Selenium?

The list of WebDriver API's which are used to automate browser include:

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AndroidDriver

ChromeDriver

EventFiringWebDriver

FirefoxDriver

HtmlUnitDriver

InternetExplorerDriver
iPhoneDriver

iPhoneSimulatorDriver

RemoteWebDriver

14) List out some of the Automation tools which could be integrated with Selenium to achieve
continuous testing.

Selenium can be used to automate functional tests and can be integrated with automation test tools
such as Maven, Jenkins, &Docker to achieve continuous testing. It can also be integrated with tools
such as TestNG, &JUnit for managing test cases and generating reports.

15) What do you mean by the assertion in Selenium?

The assertion is used as a verification point. It verifies that the state of the application conforms to
what is expected. The types of assertion are "assert", "verify" and "waitFor".

16) Explain the difference between assert and verify commands?

Assert: Assert command checks if the given condition is true or false. If the condition is true, the
program control will execute the next phase of testing, and if the condition is false, execution will
stop, and nothing will be executed.

Verify: Verify command also checks if the given condition is true or false. It doesn't halt program
execution, i.e., any failure during verification would not stop the execution, and all the test phases
would be executed.

17) What do you mean by XPath?

XPath is also defined as XML Path. It is a language used to query XML documents. It is an important
approach to locate elements in Selenium. XPath consists of a path expression along with some
conditions. Here, we can easily write XPath script/query to locate any element in the webpage. It is
developed to allow the navigation of XML documents. The key factors that it considered while
navigating are selecting individual elements, attributes, or some other part of an XML document for
specific processing. It also produces reliable locators. Some other points about XPath are as follows.

XPath is a language used for locating nodes in XML documents.

XPath can be used as a substitute when you don't have a suitable id or name attribute for the
element you want to locate.

XPath provides locating strategies like:

XPath Absolute

XPath Attributes
18) Explain XPath Absolute and XPath attributes.

XPath Absolute:

XPath Absolute enables users to mention the complete XPath location from the root HTML tag to the
specific elements.

Syntax: //html/body/tag1[index]/tag2[index]/.../tagN[index]

Example: //html/body/div[2]/div/div[2]/div/div/div/fieldset/form/div[1]/input[1]

XPath Attributes:

XPath Attributes is always recommended when you don't have a suitable id or name attribute for the
element you want to locate.

Syntax: //htmltag[@attribute1='value1' and @attribute2='value2']

Example: //input[@id='passwd' and @placeholder='password']

19) What is the difference between "/" and "//" in XPath?

Single Slash "/": Single slash is used to create XPath with absolute path.

Double Slash "//": Double slash is used to create XPath with the relative path.

20) What are the different types of annotations which are used in Selenium?

JUnit annotations which can be used are:

Test

Before

After

Ignore

BeforeClass

AfterClass

RunWith

21) What are the WebDriver supported Mobile Testing Drivers?

WebDriver supported "mobile testing drivers" are:

AndroidDriver
IphoneDriver

OperaMobileDriver

22) What are the popular programming languages supported by Selenium WebDriver to write Test
Cases?

Selenium WebDriver supports the below languages to write Test Cases.

JAVA

PHP

Python

C#

Ruby

Perl

23) What is the difference between type keys and type commands?

TypeKeys() will trigger JavaScript event in most of the cases whereas .type() won't.

24) What is the difference between "type" and "typeAndWait" command?

"type" command is used to type keyboard key values into the text box of software web application.
It can also be used for selecting values of combo box whereas "typeAndWait" command is used
when your typing is completed and software web page start reloading. This command will wait for
software application page to reload. If there is no page reload event on typing, you have to use a
simple "type" command.

25) What is the difference between findElement() and findElements()?

findElement(): It is used to find the first element within the current page using the given "locating
mechanism". It returns a single WebElement.

findElements(): It uses the given "locating mechanism" to find all the elements within the current
page. It returns a list of web elements.

26) What is the wait? How many types of waits in selenium?

Selenium Webdriver introduces the concept of waits for the AJAX-based application. There are two
types of waits:

Implicit Wait
Explicit Wait

27) What is the main disadvantage of implicit wait?

The main disadvantage of implicit wait is that it slows down test performance.

Another disadvantage of implicit wait is:

Suppose, you set the waiting limit to be 10 seconds, and the elements appear in the DOM in 11
seconds, your tests will be failed because you told it to wait a maximum of 10 seconds.

28) What is Selenium Grid?

Selenium Grid facilitates you to distribute your tests on multiple machines and all of them at the
same time. So, you can execute tests on Internet Explorer on Windows and Safari on Mac machine
using the same text script. It reduces the time of test execution and provides quick feedback.

Advance Level - Selenium Interview Questions

29) How can we launch different browsers in Selenium WebDriver?

We have to create an instance of a driver of that particular browser.

WebDriver driver =newFirefoxDriver();

Here, "WebDriver" is an interface, and we are creating a reference variable "driver" of type
WebDriver, instantiated using "FireFoxDriver" class.

30) Write a code snippet to launch Firefox browser in WebDriver.

public class FirefoxBrowserLaunchDemo {

public static void main(String[] args) {

//Creating a driver object referencing WebDriver interface

WebDriver driver;

//Setting webdriver.gecko.driver property

System.setProperty("webdriver.gecko.driver", pathToGeckoDriver + "\\geckodriver.exe");

driver = newFirefoxDriver();

//Using get() method to open a webpage

driver.get("http://javatpoint.com");

//Closing the browser

driver.quit();