What are the various Components of Selenium?

There are various components of Selenium. It can work on multiple browsers like Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and so on. It also supports more than one operating system like Windows, Mac, Linux, and so on.

The components of Selenium are listed below −

• Selenium IDE.
• Selenium RC.
• Selenium Webdriver.
• Selenium Grid.

Selenium IDE

Selenium Integrated Development Environment is an important part of the Selenium suite. It was first developed as a Firefox plugin, however now it is available in both Firefox and Chrome browser.

Some of the features of Selenium IDE −

• The recording, debugging and editing of the functional tests can be done in Selenium IDE.

• The scripts in Selenium IDE are developed in Selenese which is a scripting language in Selenium.

• Selenium commands help us to perform tasks like clicking a button or link, taking input in an edit box, obtaining a text from a webelement and so on.

Selenium RC

Selenium Remote Control is a server implemented in Java. It can accept commands for browsers using the HTTP.

Some of the features of Selenium RC −

• Automation tests in Selenium RC can be developed in any programming languages like Java, Python, C#and so on.

• To initiate test execution, we have to create an instance of the Selenium RC server.

Selenium WebDriver

Selenium webdriver was developed after Selenium RC. It receives commands and passes them to the browser. This is done with the help of the browser drivers that sends commands to the browser and obtains the results.

Some of the features of Selenium RC −

• Automation tests can be written in multiple programming languages like the Java, C#, Python, JavaScript, and so on.

• Selenium webdriver supports browsers like Chrome, Firefox, Safari, IE, and so on.

• Selenium webdriver works on more than one platforms like Windows, Mac, Linux, Android, and so on.

• Headless execution can be achieved with the help of the HTMLUnit Driver.

• Selenium webdriver does not require a server to initiate test execution and it communicates directly with the browser.

• Selenium webdriver is open-source and comes without any licensing cost.

Selenium Grid

Selenium Grid is mainly used for parallel testing. It enables us to execute varied tests in multiple machines simultaneously.

Some of the features of Selenium Grid −

• Presence of a hub machine which directs the execution on multiple machines. Also, there are more than one node machines where the actual execution takes place.

• Selenium Grid supports testing on multiple browsers and platforms.

• Reduces execution time by allowing parallel execution of tests.