Selenium is among the most widely used testing frameworks, which is utilized to automate user actions for the item under examination. Selenium is open-source software and the primary element that makes up the selenium framework is the Selenium WebDriver.
Selenium WebDriver lets you perform tests on different browsers such as Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer, Microsoft Edge, and more. The main benefit of using Selenium WebDriver is that it can be used with different programming languages such as .Net, Java, C#, PHP, Python, and more.
Although Selenium can make a website or web-based app testing easy but there are a number of issues in Selenium automated testing that programmers must overcome when using the framework. Let’s take a look at the most frequently encountered challenges in Selenium Automation, along with the solutions they provide.
Selenium Challenges And How You Can Overcome Them In 2023
1) Flaky Tests
False positive refers to a situation in which your test results turn out as successful, even when it’s not. Contrarily, False negative is a situation where test results indicate an error during script’s execution, despite the fact that everything is running as planned. False positives and False negatives have always presented an issue for automated web testing which is why Selenium is no exception.
If you’re conducting hundreds or thousands of test scenarios through your Selenium script, there could be a possibility that you come across tests that give false positives or negatives. If they are left unhandled for too long tests, the flaws could leave a user with a false impression of their automated test scripts or their web software under testing.
Tests that are flaky are definitely among the more frequently encountered issues encountered by Selenium automation. They can be difficult to deal with and I’d love to discuss ways in the process of tackling flaky tests however, that’s an extensive discussion on its own.
2) Inability To Scale
Selenium is an amazing automated testing tool, and because it is open source, it has made it easier for web testers across the globe. But one of the main issues with Selenium automation is its inability to increase the size of the system.
The goal of automated testing is to provide greater test coverage in less time. In the beginning, you might have test builds that are short but your product is likely to grow each sprint. This means you’ll have to handle a bigger number of test scenarios. If you use Selenium WebDriver, however, you may only test in a sequential manner which isn’t as efficient as you like your automation to be. Furthermore, the rate at which tests can be completed will depend on the speed of your computer.
This is the point where Selenium Grid can be of help by allowing users to run tests in parallel. However, there’s a drawback to this as well. It is impossible to thoroughly test your web-based application or website using a variety of OS and browsers. Why? It’s because the Selenium Grid will only allow you in cross-browser tests on specific browsers that are installed on your personal machine.
LambdaTest offers a cloud-based Selenium Grid to help you get faster through releases. It allows you to test the performance of your app or website with more than 3000 actual browsers including browser versions, and operating systems that are hosted on the cloud.
Instead of testing in a linear fashion, you can make use of the advantages to take advantage of Parallel testing with Selenium Through this, you can lower the total cost of your project, and speed up the development of new features and products, as the automated tests are run using Parallel (i.e. simultaneous sessions).
3) Handling Dynamic Content
A website or web app can be made up of static content, or content which is active in the sense that it is dynamic. Testing a site or web application with static content presents a small number of difficulties when it comes to Selenium automation.
But, in the current times, the majority of websites have content that can differ from one user to the next. That means the website’s content is always changing (AJAX applications that use AJAX).
A typical online store can load different items based on the site from which the user logs in, or the content could change according to the selection made by the user from a specific drop-down menu. Since the new content takes time it takes to display, it’s essential to run your test only after the loading process is completed.
Because elements on a website are loaded at various intervals it is possible that there are issues in the event that an element isn’t yet on the DOM. This is the reason handling dynamic content is among the biggest challenges when it comes to Selenium automation.
An easy way to resolve this issue is to put the thread to sleep for a few seconds, which could give enough time for loading the contents. However, this isn’t thought to be a good idea, since, regardless of whether the necessary event occurs or not the thread would be asleep for that long.
A better way to tackle this problem using Selenium WebDriver dynamic content would be to employ the implicit Wait or Implicit Wait (depending on the requirements).
4) Mobile Devices Testing Is Not Allowed
Although it is true that the Selenium framework is extensively used to test websites and web-based applications across a variety of operating systems and browsers.
However, the testing is restricted to mobile devices. Therefore, testing your site or web app to be compatible with mobile devices is one of the biggest issues in Selenium automation.
If you want to carry out testing automation on mobile applications then the most well-known open-source framework is Appium.
If you’re looking to test your website’s performance on various screens and mobile devices, then LambdaTest will help you accomplish it manually, at least at the moment.
It is possible to capture screenshots of the issue and highlight the issue using a built-in image editor, and then transfer it to several third-party tools, like JIRA asana, slack and Trello, and more.
You can even make videos of your testing session using the built-in screen recording tool accessible on LambdaTest.
Following the very successful debut of Selenium on our platform, We are currently looking to incorporate automation into the testing of mobile phones by using Appium which is very useful to speed up your testing.
5) Test Reports Generation
The principal goal of any test is to identify bugs and improve the overall quality of the product. Reports play a significant function in keeping a record of the tests that are being run along with the generated output as well as the results of tests. While there are various modules such as the pytest_html (for Python) that can be used in conjunction with Pytest and Selenium however, the information included in the test report might not be comprehensive.
There are similar packages/modules that are compatible with different programming languages, such as Java, C#, .Net, and so on. which can be utilized in conjunction with Selenium However, the same issue is present for these languages as well. The gathering of test reports is one of the major challenges for Selenium automation.
LambdaTest offers you a scalable test infrastructure that allows you for automated testing by using the Selenium Grid that is hosted by our servers in the cloud. LambdaTest has also released the API of Selenium Automation to help you collect useful test data from the script’s execution on the LambdaTest platform and transfer it to the preferred local cloud storage. Utilizing the LambdaTest API, you can do these things:
- Find and organize test information
- Get build information like test status for the build, testing status, time of the test as well as errors and test logs
- Take command via command screenshots
- Information on the various browsers available on the LambdaTest platform and others.
Conclusion
The above list is a few of the typical challenges encountered when it comes to Selenium automation. There are certain limitations when it comes to Selenium is involved. Selenium is only a Selenium framework to test web-based applications i.e. it’s not used to test local Windows applications.
There are a few scenarios where you might want to use CAPTCHA or RECAPTCHA which are used to stop any type of bots from submitting data on the web page. Because CAPTCHA is intended for security purposes and cannot be evaded, it is not possible to get around it.
If you’d like to make use of Selenium in order to evaluate your web application on different operating systems, browsers or devices in an easier and efficient way, you could use LambdaTest. It is possible to port your code that makes use of the Local Selenium Web Driver to LambdaTest’s Remote WebDriver with minimal effort.
