What's the relationship between Selenium RC and WebDriver?


There is a relationship between Selenium RC and Selenium webdriver. Prior to the introduction of Selenium webdriver, there was extensive usage of Selenium RC.

Both the tools, supported automation tests to be executed in multiple browsers. Also, multiple programming languages can be used to implement the test cases. However, there are differences between them as listed below −

FunctionalitiesSelenium RCSelenium Webdriver
Server
Needs the server to trigger test execution.
No need for the server to trigger test execution.
Object Oriented
Not much support from object oriented concepts.
Majority of tests based on object oriented concepts.
Dynamic Locators
No identification of elements with dynamic locators.
Identification of elements with dynamic locators.
Alerts
No support for alerts.
Supports alerts.
Mouse Actions
No support for mouse actions.
Supports mouse actions.
Dropdown
No support to handle dropdown.
Supports handling dropdown.
iPhone/Android
No support for iPhone/Android testing.
Supports iPhone/Android testing
Listener
No support for Listener.
Supports Listeners.
Performance
It does not communicate directly with the browser. So it is slower in execution.
Execution is fast as it communicates directly with the browser.
Architecture
Based on JavaScript.
Not based on JavaScript.
Xpath
Absolute xpath available.
Has absolute and relative xpath.
Navigation
No support for navigation.
Supports navigation.
Headless execution
No support for headless execution.
Supports headless execution.
Selenium Core
Server injects Selenium core (a JavaScript program) to the browser. The Selenium Core gets the commands from the RC server. Selenium Core executes the commands in JavaScript. Then the JavaScript commands provide instructions to the browser. Finally, the browser runs the instructions given by the Selenium Core and sends a complete status of the execution to the server. This final execution is output received by the user.
No Selenium Core. Communication directly with the browser. The browser runs the instructions produced by the test.
Report generation
Capable of generating HTML test reports.
Not capable of generating HTML test reports with its in-built features.
API
Has complicated and redundant APIs.
User−friendly and simple APIs.
Community Support
Limited community support.
Big and extensive community support.

Updated on: 30-Jan-2021

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