How does Selenium WebDriver work?

Selenium WebDriver acts as a mediator, allowing the code to communicate with different browser drivers. When Selenium is used to run tests, the test cases are created using element locators, which are located using a Selenium element locator technique. Then, using Selenium WebDriver, actions can be performed on those elements. In a nutshell, Selenium WebDriver works in three steps:

Code Examples of Selenium WebDriver in Action

1. Java

import org.openqa.selenium.WebDriver; 

import org.openqa.selenium.chrome.ChromeDriver; 

import org.openqa.selenium.By; 

 

public class SeleniumTest { 

    public static void main(String[] args) { 

        // Set the path of the Chrome driver executable 

        System.setProperty("webdriver.chrome.driver", "path/to/chromedriver"); 

 

        // Initialize a Chrome browser instance 

        WebDriver driver = new ChromeDriver(); 

 

        // Navigate to a web page 

        driver.get("https://www.example.com"); 

 

        // Perform actions (e.g., click a button, enter text) 

        driver.findElement(By.id("some-id")).sendKeys("Some text"); 

 

        // Close the browser 

        driver.quit(); 

    } 

} 

2. Python

from selenium import webdriver 

from selenium.webdriver.common.keys import Keys 

 

# Set the path of the Chrome driver executable 

driver = webdriver.Chrome(executable_path='path/to/chromedriver') 

 

# Navigate to a web page 

driver.get("http://www.example.com") 

 

# Perform actions 

elem = driver.find_element_by_name("q") 

elem.clear() 

elem.send_keys("pycon") 

elem.send_keys(Keys.RETURN) 

 

# Close the browser 

driver.close() 

3. C#

using OpenQA.Selenium; 

using OpenQA.Selenium.Chrome; 

 

class SeleniumTest { 

    static void Main() { 

        // Set the path of the Chrome driver executable 

        IWebDriver driver = new ChromeDriver("path/to/chromedriver"); 

 

        // Navigate to a web page 

        driver.Navigate().GoToUrl("http://www.example.com"); 

 

        // Perform actions 

        IWebElement query = driver.FindElement(By.Name("q")); 

        query.SendKeys("Selenium"); 

        query.Submit(); 

 

        // Close the browser 

        driver.Quit(); 

    } 

}  

4. Ruby

equire 'selenium-webdriver' 

 

# Set the path of the Chrome driver executable 

driver = Selenium::WebDriver.for :chrome, driver_path: 'path/to/chromedriver' 

 

# Navigate to a web page 

driver.navigate.to "http://www.example.com" 

 

# Perform actions 

element = driver.find_element(name: 'q') 

element.send_keys "Hello WebDriver!" 

element.submit 

 

# Close the browser 

driver.quit 

These examples provide the basic structure for Selenium WebDriver tests. Depending on the complexity of the web application and test requirements, advanced features like handling dropdowns, checkboxes, alerts, frames, and executing JavaScript may be needed.