Selenium Automation with Java

Introduction to Selenium

Selenium WebDriver drives real browsers through code. With Java it is the industry standard stack for UI regression suites.

Setup (Maven)

<dependency>
  <groupId>org.seleniumhq.selenium</groupId>
  <artifactId>selenium-java</artifactId>
  <version>4.21.0</version>
</dependency>

First Test

WebDriver driver = new ChromeDriver();
driver.get("https://groovygrails.in/login");
driver.findElement(By.id("email")).sendKeys("user@test.com");
driver.findElement(By.id("password")).sendKeys("Pass@123");
driver.findElement(By.cssSelector("button[type=submit]")).click();
// assert dashboard visible, then driver.quit();

Locators: XPath and CSS

• Prefer stable IDs and names first.
• CSS: #loginBtn, input[name=email], .cart > li.
• XPath: //button[text()=Login], //input[@type=password]. Powerful but brittle; avoid absolute paths.

Forms, Dropdowns, Alerts, Frames, Windows

• Dropdowns: new Select(element).selectByVisibleText(...).
• Alerts: driver.switchTo().alert().accept().
• Frames: switchTo().frame(name), back with defaultContent().
• Tabs: switchTo().window(handle) from getWindowHandles().
• Actions class for hover, drag-drop and keyboard chords.

Waits and Screenshots

• Never use Thread.sleep: use WebDriverWait with ExpectedConditions (visible, clickable).
• Capture screenshots on failure for the bug report.

Page Object Model and Data-Driven Tests

One class per page (LoginPage with loginAs() method); tests call page methods, never raw locators. Feed data from CSV/Excel so one test covers 50 credential rows.

Key Points

• Stable locators plus explicit waits equal stable suites.
• Page Objects keep UI changes in one place.
• Automate regression, not exploration.