Today people are more into IT; some are learning selenium, and some are undergoing automation testing training. But the fact is IT jobs demand is growing higher every day.
The popular automation tool Selenium WebDriver may perform tests on various browsers, including Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Chrome. Cross-Browser Testing is the common name for testing conducted across multiple browsers. Therefore, you must set the appropriate executable path directly to launch any of these browsers’ drivers for testing. People then instantiate the proper driver instance and continue with the desired code execution. You have to go through these tasks every time the versions change, which makes them tedious. As a result, Selenium’s WebDriver Manager class is what you use.
What is the standard Selenium method for instantiating browsers?
You know that to run Selenium automation scripts on browsers like Chrome or Firefox, you need to download the drivers’ binary files, such as Chromedriver, GeckoDriver, etc. The automation script must then be modified to add the classpath location or set the path to these binaries.
To run Selenium WebDriver automation scripts on the Chrome browser, you must first download chromedriver.exe and then use the System. Use the setProperty method to specify its path.
If the path is incorrectly set, an error will occur.
The webdriver.chrome.Driver system attribute is responsible for setting the path of the driver executable.
For each operating System, it is tedious to obtain and manage these drivers manually. Additionally, you must keep track of any updates to the binaries or browsers. For each executable, you should confirm compatibility before adding it.
WebDriverManager by Boni Garcia automates this without manually verifying the new versions or keeping binaries for all browsers, removing the disadvantage of manually maintaining these binaries and setting paths in scripts.
How does Web Driver Manager work?
With the WebDriverManager API, users can automate the management of driver executables like chromedriver.exe, geckodriver.exe, and other programmes the Selenium WebDriver API needs.
This lets you skip all the manual procedures you previously had to follow to set up the browser driver to conduct the tests. Browsers like Chrome, Firefox, Opera, PhantomJS, Microsoft Edge, or Internet Explorer are supported.
Setting Up Drivers For Various Browsers:
The first line of code you write while implementing Selenium automation is as follows:
WebDriver driver = new FireFoxDriver ();
You are defining a reference variable (driver) whose type is an interface, meaning WebDriver is an interface.
Any object you assign to it must be an instance of the FireFoxDriver class or another driver that implements that interface. In this situation, WebDriver serves as the interface while FireFoxDriver acts as a class.
Once the driver configuration is complete, you run any Selenium command, like:
driver.getTitle ();
What now occurs is that an internal HTTP request is produced and sent to the specific browser driver that you configured. The browser driver uses that HTTP server to collect the HTTP requests, and it determines the steps necessary for performing the Selenium command.
The browser executes the logic you have established, and the browser then sends the execution result back to the HTTP server, which then transmits the status to the automation script once more.
Therefore, after configuring the driver, you may access all of the built-in methods of the driver’s class, including:
- findElement();
- close();
- getClass(); and many more
HTML Unit Driver
With the help of this driver, you can perform headless browser testing, which implies there isn’t a visible GUI because it functions internally. Additionally, not all operations can be carried out as they do in regular browsers.
In general, HTML Unit Driver is not advised for testing. You can utilise it to generate test data, send the content of one webpage to another program or script, or because it is faster and more lightweight than other WebDriver implementations.
Bottom Line:
The above points will guide you in the right way to understand how to manage Selenium browser drivers easily. Also, it is suggested that online selenium courses are the best for your learning and will land you a high-paying job.
