How To Use Selenium With Java In 5 Simple Steps?

What is Selenium?

Selenium is an open-source framework that is used to automate the testing process over web applications. The interface allows writing test scripts in various programming languages on web applications spread across several platforms and browsers. 

One of the key aspects of Selenium is that it is not a single tool, but a suite of tools. The Selenium as a whole consists of four different tools, and each tool has its own set of specific features. 

The four different tools are the following: 

Selenium supports several browsers like Chrome, Safari, Firefox, Mozilla, etc. Then, there are multiple programming languages that can be used to create Selenium test scripts, such as Ruby, Python, Java, C#, etc.

Out of all the languages that could be used to write scripts in Selenium, Java emerges to be the most popularly used programming language. 

Now, the question arises - why is this so?

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Why is Java Preferred with Selenium?

Selenium and Java turn out to be a perfect blend to run automated tests on different web browsers. Java turns out to be the most preferred language by the professionals who use Selenium in their day-to-day lives. 

Some of the reasons why Java is preferred with Selenium are:

• Java has a wide network of active software developers who actively contribute to writing test cases. This not only helps the Java community to grow but also helps the Selenium testers.
• The execution of programs is faster in Java as compared to any other programming language.
• Today, Java is more widely used than other languages, so integrating the Selenium tests with Java is comparatively easier.

Let's have a look at some steps needed to begin with using Selenium with Java.

Using Selenium with Java

This section shall explain all the steps needed to set and then run a test through Selenium with Java bindings.

Several components are a must-have for automation testing. 

• Java Installation

The first and the most basic requirement to write and run Java programs is a Java Development Kit (JDK), which includes JRE or Java Runtime Environment. 

To download and install Java, all you need to do is:

• Download Java 
• Install Java 
• Set the environment path.

Once this is done, to verify, go to the command prompt and type java -version. If Java is successfully installed, it will show the version of Java installed in your system.

• Eclipse Installation

There is always a need for a platform where the developers can write and run their codes, and one such platform or IDE is Eclipse. Eclipse is the most sought after Java IDEs across the world.

To download and install Eclipse, all you need to do is 

• Go to their official website and download Eclipse.
• After downloading, extract the downloaded files.
• An eclipse.exe icon will appear in the Eclipse folder.

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Now, all you need to do to launch Eclipse is open that .exe file.

• Selenium Client and WebDriver Language Bindings

There are multiple languages that Selenium WebDriver supports and each of these languages have their client driver. Since we are concerned about Java, we require the ‘Selenium Java Client Driver’. 

To download the client driver, you need to go to the Selenium official website. There you can see several client drivers concerning different languages that Selenium supports: 

• Configuration of Selenium WebDriver with Eclipse

This is the most crucial step to start with Selenium. The steps to configure Selenium WebDriver with Eclipse are:

• Launch Eclipse (Double-clicking on the eclipse.exe file).
• Create a workspace.
• Then, create a new Java project:
• File -> New -> Java Project 

• Then once the project is created, right-click on the project and create a package under it. 
• New -> Package

• Then, right-click on the package and make a new class.
• New -> Class

After the class is created, it is time to add Selenium jar files to the project.

To add jar files:

• Right-click on the project folder and go to properties.
• In the dialog box that appears, navigate to the “Java Build Path”.
• Click on “Add External JARs”

Then add the jar files downloaded and click on “Apply and Close”. 

Now, Eclipse is all set to execute any Selenium test script.

• First Test Using Selenium with Java

The first script that we have used here is a simple script that opens ‘facebook.com’ on the Chrome browser. 

To use the Chrome browser, it is necessary to have the driver executable. To get the driver executable:

• Go to the official Selenium website.
• Go to the third-party driver browser section.
• Download the executable for the specific browser. 

After it is downloaded, all you need to do is put the code in your eclipse window. 

Here’s the snippet of the code we have used: 

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Important Aspects to Remember

Several important aspects are to be kept in mind while writing Selenium tests with Java. Some of them are:

• The use of the right Selenium locators make the program more reliable and execute faster.
• A data-driven framework must be used to execute the Selenium tests.
• A specific halt time should be given to the test script, which helps avoid the script's failure.
• The test cases that are used must be asserted in Selenium with the help of assertions provided by several frameworks like JUnit and TestNG.
• The developer must take screenshots and develop reports as proof of testing for failures. These screenshots prove themselves to be worth it when testers have to explain the issues to the developers.

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Conclusion

By now, you would have realized why Java is the most widely used programming language with Selenium. In the article, you learned the basics of Selenium and how Selenium can be used with Java. We also saw how to incorporate Selenium with Java with a hands-on demo, in which, towards the end, we saw how to run our first Selenium test script in Eclipse.

If you have any questions for us, let us know in the Selenium comment section with the Java article, and we shall have our experts answer them for you.

Choosing a language to run your automated tests solely depends on the developer or tester, or may vary depending on the project or that particular organization.