What is the reason behind Selenium not utilizing JavaScript?

I've been a beginner in the world of Javascript for a while now, with my main goal being to use it for creating Selenium automations as part of my journey into QA automation.

However, I find myself quite perplexed when it comes to the language. In all the Selenium documentation and script examples I come across, I see functions like "driver.FindElement", "sendKeys", "getTitle", and so on.

From what I've learned so far, regular Javascript doesn't tend to use these exact functions but rather something along the lines of "document.getElementById", "document.title", and such.

Could someone please shed some light on the language that Selenium uses when it mentions "sendKeys"? Why is it that in all the resources related to Selenium and Javascript, I only encounter "getTitle" instead of "document.title"? Is what I've grasped about pure JS not relevant in this context?

I'm aware that this might seem like a simple question to many, but I feel stuck and unable to progress further in my learning until this confusion is resolved. Thank you!

javascriptselenium

Answer №1

Utilizing the JavaScript HTML DOM API, you can create automation scripts using functions like document.getElementById and document.title.

To run these automation scripts on a web page, you must execute them on the browser side, either through the DevTool's console or by embedding the script directly into the HTML source code via 

<script src='<your automation script><script>'
.

However, injecting automation scripts into third-party websites or even testing your own site can be challenging due to difficulties in managing the running process and packaging the website with the automation script included. This limits the effectiveness of using JavaScript alone for automation.

Selenium, on the other hand, is a powerful web automation tool that relies on Webdriver as a proxy between the Selenium API and real browsers. Each browser vendor provides its own executable binary for Webdriver but must adhere to the W3C specification to ensure consistent results when executing Selenium API calls across different browser platforms.

With Selenium, you can use APIs like driver.findElement and driver.sendKeys to compose automation scripts in various languages such as Python, JavaScript, Java, Ruby, C#, VBA, Perl, and PHP. Each language has its unique syntax and usage for interacting with the WebDriver binary through HTTP requests.

The WebDriver binary only accepts HTTP requests and cannot directly execute Selenium API methods. When the WebDriver binary is initialized, an internal HTTP server processes incoming requests from automation scripts.

All language-specific implementations of Selenium APIs translate their method calls into HTTP requests which are then transmitted to the WebDriver binary running inside the browser. The common wire protocol used by all WebDriver binaries defines a RESTful web service utilizing JSON over HTTP, known as The WebDriver JSON Wire Protocol. More information can be found here.

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