Selenium Vs CodedUI

This blog will help understand the strengths of Selenium and CodedUI. This will also guide you through choosing the correct tool. Here are some features listed down of both Selenium and CodedUI.

 Recording and Playback Functionality

Each of the testing tools has the ability of recording the actions and playback the recorded actions. Selenium provides the plug-in named Selenium IDE with Mozilla Firefox with which the actions can be recorded.

With Visual Studio CUIT provides Coded UI Test Builder to record the actions.

 IDE and tools with which the tester can write the scripts

With Selenium IDE there is no special tool and specific technology to write the script. We can insert commands with ‘Table or Source View’ when required. Selenium IDE comes as a plug-in with Mozilla Firefox. With this we can create a test suite which comprise of various test cases. With Selenium IDE is, you can convert recorded Selenium IDE scripts into different languages (Java, c#, Ruby)

For CUIT we can use Visual Studio IDE to write scripts. For CUIT we have a very elaborative IDE as the recording can be done using Visual Studio. All the features of Visual Studio are applicable.

 Ease of Test Case execution

With Selenium IDE we have the option of executing the entire test suite already recorded or a test case at a time.

CUIT can either be executed with Visual Studio or by using Microsoft Test Manager (MTM). With MTM we can provide various settings for the test case execution so as to gather a lot of information while executing the test case behind the scene.

 Language Support

To write tests there are a lot of programming languages like C#, Java, Perl, PHP, Python or Ruby.

For CUIT we can write the script with Visual Studio with which we can use all object programming concepts if required.

 Support for various application types

Selenium supports only Web applications.

CUIT supports Windows Applications, Web Application, WPF applications, SharePoint, Office Client Applications Dynamics CRM Web Client applications.

 Support for Data Driven Testing

Selenium IDE supports xml data source.

Coded UI Test supports any data source supported by .NET framework which can come in the form of a .CSV file, XML file or any other data source like SQL Server table, Access table etc.

 Validations or Assertions

Selenium assertions can be used in 3 modes assert, verify and waitFor. When an “assert” fails, the test is aborted. When a “verify” (Soft Assertions) fails, the test will continue execution, logging the failure. This facility can be used with TestNg framework.

We can use Coded UI Test Builder to add assertions for your UI controls. We need to edit the assertion condition as required (equal to, in between, contains etc.), provide expected value and generate code for it. Mouse hover events can be recorded manually if required.

#	Features	Selenium	CodedUI
1	Record and Play Back	√	√
2	IDE and tools	√	√
3	Ease of Test Case execution	√	√
4	Language Support	C#, JAVA, PERL, PHP, Python or Ruby	C# & VB.NET
5	Support for various application types	Only Web	Almost All
6	Support for Data Driven Testing	CSV & XML	CSV, XML, Access SQL Server & Oracle*.