Set up Selenium WebDriver

Table of Contents

Introduction

Selenium WebDriver is an open-source automation tool. It is primarily a web application automation API. It provides all the necessary methods within it to achieve the actions of a web application user. In other words, it is equipped with all the functionality required to automate the tests of web applications. Other than that, Selenium is a multi-browser and multi-platform automation tool.

To use Selenium WebDriver for test automation, developers need to do the environment setup. Thus, this environment facilitates test suite development in Selenium.

Set up Steps

Selenium WebDriver is available in different programming language bindings. In this course, we are learning Selenium WebDriver with Java. Hence, we will go through the steps to set it up with Java language.

Download and install Java

The first step towards the Selenium WebDriver environment setup is to get Java in the system. Basically, to write and execute Selenium scripts we need to download and install Java. Many Java applications require only JRE which is Java run time environment. But, for developing Selenium tests in Java we need JDK which is Java Development Kit. Further, please refer to the tutorial on Java Setup available in our course for detailed stepwise instructions.

Set up Java environment variables

After installing Java, we need to set up Java Environment variables in the system. In general, the environment variables help to point to the location of JDK and bin when an application needs them. In our case, there are two Java environment variables whose value we need to set

JAVA_HOME: It refers to the location of JDK in the system
Path: It refers to the location of the bin folder inside the JDK folder in the system

Please refer to the Java SetUp tutorial in our course for detailed steps on how to set up environment variables.

Install Eclipse IDE

We need an editor to write, compile, and execute our programs. As we know, Eclipse IDE is the most famous editor for Java application. So, we will use it for Selenium script development. Consequently, it provides tools like Maven for dependency management and frameworks like TestNG as extensions or plugins which can be later integrated.

Please refer to our tutorial on how to Install Eclipse IDE for the detailed setup instructions.

Download Selenium client Jars

Selenium WebDriver is available as an open-source API for use. From there, we can select the appropriate bundle as per the configuration of the system. Then, we need to download it from its official site and unzip it to get the Jars. Please go through the tutorial on how to download Selenium Client Jars available in our course for stepwise instructions.

Set Up Eclipse project with Selenium client Jars

After the above steps are completed, we need to import Selenium Client Jars in Eclipse to start using their methods. Firstly, we create a Java project where we will write all our Selenium code inside a package. Then, we create a package which will store the Java classes. Next, we import all the Selenium client jars into this project so that we can use them.

You can find all the detailed instructions to perform this step at setting up Eclipse with Selenium tutorial.

Conclusion

This tutorial introduces you to the setup steps of Selenium WebDriver for Java. To conclude, it is very important to follow and complete each setup step carefully. Once the environment is ready, you can start writing the Selenium code in the editor.