Understanding Desired Capabilities in Selenium.
This article aims to explain in short what are DesiredCapabilities in Selenium and how it helps QAs test web-apps for cross browser compatibility testing across multiple devices and platforms.
Let’s get started.
What Are DesiredCapabilities in Selenium?
DesiredCapabilities are a set of key-value pairs encoded as a JSON object. It helps QAs define basic test requirements such as operating systems, browser combinations, browser versions, etc. within Selenium test scripts. The DesiredCapabilities Class has multiple methods that let QAs specify the required properties regarding the desired test environments.
Why do QAs need DesiredCapabilities?
Each specific test case needs to be executed in a different environment (browser, mobile, or an operating system) as per the market trends. For example, a QA might need to test a Web-application on two different browsers (Chrome, Safari) installed on mobile devices running on different operating systems (Android, iOS).
This is where Desired Capabilities enables QAs to instruct the Selenium WebDriver regarding the environment to be used while performing the tests. Using the setCapabilities method from the DesiredCapabilities class, QAs can execute parallel tests on desired devices, browsers, and operating systems available on a Cloud Selenium Grid.
It’s vital for teams to test their web applications on a wide range of real devices and browsers. Here’s where teams can leverage platforms like BrowserStack, which provides a Cloud Selenium Grid for automated testing on 2000+ real devices and browsers. It is designed especially to help QAs streamline their test automation processes in order to save time and effort.
Understanding Desired Capabilities in Selenium Webdriver is of utmost importance. This is because QAs need to test their software across a large number of platforms, browsers, and devices — according to market trends. This ensures that their web-app is cross browser compatible and provides a robust user experience across the board.
