In today’s fast-paced software development world, speed and efficiency are paramount in testing. Cloud mobile testing with LambdaTest Selenium Grid offers a powerful solution for developers and QA engineers by enabling parallel testing in the cloud. This innovative platform allows you to run automated Selenium tests across multiple browsers, operating systems, and mobile devices simultaneously, drastically reducing the time needed for cross-browser and cross-device validation.
Selenium Grid, an essential component of the Selenium suite, enables you to run test cases simultaneously in different browsers and browser versions. Running tests sequentially on a single machine is always time-consuming, as you can only load a few browsers on your local machine, limiting testing capabilities (e.g., Windows couldn’t test Safari).
It is where the Selenium Grid setup allows testing on all major browsers, operating systems, and mobile devices, ensuring broad browser coverage and a uniform user experience.
With LambdaTest, you can use cloud infrastructure to eliminate the need for complex setups or maintain physical devices. Whether testing on different browser versions or mobile environments, LambdaTest Selenium Grid provides a scalable and cost-effective way to enhance your testing workflows.
This blog will explore how LambdaTest Selenium Grid helps streamline your testing process by enabling parallel test execution in the cloud.
What is a Selenium Grid?
Selenium Grid enables the execution of Selenium tests on remote machines by utilizing a proxy server that runs on a Selenium server. This setup allows for the central management of various browser configurations. It facilitates parallel test execution across different browser versions, making cross-browser testing more efficient.
Additionally, Selenium Grid supports parallel testing across multiple browsers and operating system combinations through a client-server model. In this setup, the central server, known as the Hub, communicates with multiple clients, enabling seamless interactions and test execution on various configurations.
Why Use Selenium Grid?
Selenium Grid eases the various tasks while performing automated testing. Here is why you should use Selenium Grid setup to run your test suites:
- Open Source and Free: Selenium Grid is an open-source project. Teams can use it for free. The documentation is updated regularly with every release, making things like installation, configuration, and usage easier for the users.
- Enables Cross-Browser Testing: Multiple browsers are gaining popularity, and every person prefers to use the browser of his choice for browning websites. It becomes necessary for businesses to test their websites on multiple browsers. Selenium Grid 4 enables the software teams to perform cross-browser testing quickly, allowing them to configure multiple browsers easily.
- Supports Multiple Browser Versions: Another essential feature is that Selenium Grid allows users to configure multiple browser versions easily. It helps test websites in different browsers and their versions, enabling teams to detect issues and fix them as soon as possible.
- Supports Parallel Testing: This is one of the most important features behind using Selenium Grid for testing. It helps run the tests in parallel, allowing the teams to save time on test execution and get faster results and feedback on the builds.
Features of Selenium Grid
The following are the salient features of Selenium Grid 4:
Architecture Support: In the earlier version of Selenium Grid, only two processes were available, i.e., Hub and Nodes. The Selenium Grid 4 architecture supports the following six processes, which allows for deployment in different ways:
- Router
- Distributor
- Session Map
- New Session Queue
- Node
- Event Bus
Different Grid Roles: Selenium Grid can be configured in the following three ways:
- Standalone Mode
- Classical Grid (Hub and Node)
- Fully Distributed (Event Bus, New Session Queue, Session Map, Distributor, Router and Node)
Docker Support: Selenium Grid offers out-of-the-box support for Docker. The Docker daemon runs on port 2375.
Observability: Observability in Selenium Grid allows understanding and debugging of internal working as it is designed to be fully distributed. The following three are the main pillars that help in providing detailed insights into observability.
- Traces
- Metrics
- Logs
GraphQL Query Support: GraphQL, a query language for APIs, can be used to query and fetch the data that the user requires. With Selenium Grid, GraphQL queries are supported. A simple query can fetch the details of the session, node and grid, current session count, max session count, all session details, etc.
Support for Customizing a Node: With Selenium Grid, the Nodes can be customized and updated according to the prerequisite for test execution. For example, doing some additional setup before the session begins execution, similarly running clean-up jobs post-session is complete.
Support for External Data Store: Selenium Grid allows us to save the information related to the currently running sessions into an external data store that our favorite database could back, or the Redis Cache system can also be used.
Steps to Configure a Selenium Grid Setup
Here are the steps for Selenium Grid setup implementation:
Step 1: Configure a Standalone Grid
Standalone Grid provides a fully functional grid with a single command within a single process. It perfectly combines all the grid components and can run on a single machine.
The following command can be run from the terminal to start the Selenium Grid in Standalone Mode:
java -jar selenium-server-<version>.jar standalone
Ensure you navigate to the folder where you downloaded and extracted the Selenium JAR files. These files are located on My Computer in the H:\selenium_grid\ folder.
After executing the command, navigate to http://localhost:4444 to check the fully functional Selenium Grid.
Step 2: Configure Hub and Nodes
To start the Hub, open a command prompt or terminal, navigate to the directory where the Selenium Standalone Server JAR file is saved, and run the below command:
java -jar selenium-server-<version>.jar hub
Next, we need to configure the Nodes to make it fully functional.
After the Hub is started, the Nodes need to be set up to run the browser session for test execution. The Nodes can be set up in different machines. However, it should be noted that these machines should have a JDK/JRE already installed. The Nodes can also be set up on the same machine Hub runs.
To configure a Node, open a command prompt or terminal and navigate to the directory where you saved the browser driver files.
Step 3: Configure Chrome Browser in the Selenium Grid Setup
To configure Chrome in your Selenium Grid setup, specify the desired capabilities in your Selenium script.
First, ensure that the correct version of the ChromeDriver is installed and available on your hub and node machines. Then, configure the hub to point to the Chrome browser by specifying it in the DesiredCapabilities object. It allows Selenium tests to run on Chrome across various remote nodes in parallel, ensuring compatibility and consistency.
Step 4: Configure Firefox Browser in the Selenium Grid Setup
For Firefox, the setup involves downloading the appropriate version of GeckoDriver, which acts as a bridge between Selenium WebDriver and Firefox. Once installed, configure the Selenium Grid hub to recognize Firefox by defining it in the DesiredCapabilities for your tests. This configuration ensures that Firefox tests can run in parallel on multiple remote nodes, improving testing efficiency and coverage across different browser environments.
Step 5: Configure Edge Browser in the Selenium Grid Setup
Configuring Edge in a Selenium Grid setup is similar to other browsers. First, download the Edge WebDriver corresponding to your browser version. After installation, you will need to modify the hub’s capabilities to include Edge as a desired browser for testing.
With this setup, Selenium can execute tests on Microsoft Edge across remote nodes, enabling parallel testing on a variety of configurations and ensuring a comprehensive testing process for different users.
Step 6: Configure a Distributed Grid
A distributed Selenium Grid setup involves configuring multiple nodes to test on different machines or environments, which can be physical or virtual. The Selenium Hub acts as a central controller in this configuration, and nodes are distributed across different locations. This setup ensures that tests are run in parallel on various browser and OS combinations, thus speeding up test execution and broadening test coverage. By adding more nodes to your grid, you can scale up your testing process and achieve better efficiency for large test suites.
Parallel Testing At Scale Using LambdaTest
LambdaTest is an AI testing tool that allows you to test your websites and web applications across 3000+ combinations of browsers, browser versions, and operating systems. It offers an online Selenium Grid to help you perform automation testing in parallel, including Selenium mobile testing for validating performance and responsiveness on real mobile devices.
In today’s agile development environment, speed and efficiency are critical when delivering high-quality software. One of the biggest challenges developers and QA teams face is ensuring that applications work seamlessly across multiple browsers and devices without sacrificing time or resources. This is where Selenium mobile testing with LambdaTest becomes invaluable offering a powerful cloud-based platform that enables scale-based parallel testing across desktop and mobile environments alike.
LambdaTest allows developers and testers to run automatic tests concurrently throughout a wide range of browsers, working systems, and devices. By leveraging LambdaTest’s Selenium Grid, teams can carry out pass-browser testing with multiple browser versions in parallel, significantly lowering the time spent on testing. This cloud-based platform eliminates the need for coping with physical devices or complicated infrastructure, permitting teams to be conscious of what subjects building and delivering outstanding applications.
With LambdaTest, you can quickly scale your testing efforts via walking lots of checks concurrently, ensuring that your software is completely functional across all environments without bottlenecks. Whether you’re testing web applications, mobile apps, or hybrid apps,
LambdaTest’s parallel testing capabilities allow you to speed up your release cycles and increase overall productivity.
Wrapping Up
Setting up Selenium Grid manually can be quite challenging. However, with cloud-based grids, such as LambdaTest, you can easily run tests in parallel and across various configurations without the need to spend time and resources on setting up and maintaining Selenium Grid.
Give it a try by running your automated tests on this cloud-based grid.