As an experienced testing professional helping companies with test automation for over 10 years, I’ve seen firsthand the headaches cross-browser testing can cause. Believe me, I’ve been in your shoes! All the browser updates and new devices seem neverending.
Before we had solutions like desired capabilities in Selenium, testing across browsers and mobile used to be painfully manual. We’d crowd around a small lab, frantically switching between devices to run the same tedious tests over and over…it was mayhem!
Fortunately, those dark days are behind us. The test automation engineers of today have modern weapons to tackle the cross-browser chaos – desired capabilities. So let me show you how they work so you can win your testing battles!
The Landscape of Browser & Device Fragmentation
To understand why capabilities are so vital, you first need to grasp the scale and complexity of the cross-browser testing landscape…
As you can see from the chart above, the browser ecosystem has exploded over the last decade…
This fragmentation is staggering! With such diversity, ensuring your web apps work flawlessly across environments feels overwhelming…
And that’s exactly why built-in solutions like desired capabilities help testers stay sane! They provide configuration superpowers to easily distribute tests across browsers. Let’s explore how…
How Desired Capabilities Enable Flexible Test Configuration
At a basic level, desired capabilities are sets of name-value pairs that specify the environments to test against.
For example, you can use capabilities to define:
Browser Name = Firefox
Browser Version = 104
Platform = Windows 10 Capabilities serve as a gateway to run parallel tests across a matrix of browsers, viewports, and devices.
Here are some key ways they can be leveraged:
1. Configuring Local Grid Infrastructure
Combining Selenium Grid with desired capabilities, you gain precise control for routing tests to available environments on the grid.
Let’s walk through how this works…
First, register each connected browser or device as a node in the grid using a set of capabilities to identify them:
// Register Chrome node
{
"browserName": "chrome",
"browserVersion": "108",
"platformName": "Windows 10"
}
// Register iPhone node
{
"platformName": "iOS",
"platformVersion": "14.5”
“deviceName”: “iPhone 12”
} Once registered, the hub automatically distributes tests marked with matching capabilities to the right nodes!
This allows efficiently running large test suites in parallel rather than sequentially.
2. Integration with Cloud Testing Services
Maintaining your own Selenium grid infrastructure can be time-consuming…
That’s why I recommend cloud testing platforms like BrowserStack which offer a fully managed grid with thousands of browser and device options available instantly.
Just generate your desired capabilities through their handy UI to unlock that entire matrix for parallel testing!
This makes scaling cross-browser test coverage a breeze compared to DIY grid management.
3. Configuring Mobile App Testing Frameworks
Beyond Selenium, desired capabilities are also supported natively by Appium for automated testing of native, hybrid and mobile web apps.
Here’s an example set of iOS capabilities for Appium:
{
“platformName”: “iOS”,
“platformVersion”: “15.2”,
“deviceName”: “iPhone 13 Pro”
}This enables configuring tests to target a given device environment hosted on an Appium server.
Between Selenium and Appium, capabilities provide the flexibility to cover whatever type of app you need to test!
Common Desired Capability Methods
Now that you understand why capabilities are so useful, let’s dig into the key methods for defining them in Java:
1. setCapability()
The simplest approach is using setCapability() and passing the name + value:
// Set browser capability
caps.setCapability("browserName","Chrome");2. getCapability()
To retrieve a capability value, use getCapability():
// Get browser name
String browser = caps.getCapability("browser"); 3. setBrowserName()
For convenience, some common capabilities have dedicated helpers. To set the browser:
caps.setBrowserName("firefox");There are similar helpers for version, platform etc.
Now let’s look at a complete test example:
// Config test to run on Win 10 Edge
DesiredCapabilities caps = new DesiredCapabilities();
caps.setBrowserName("Edge");
caps.setPlatform(Platform.WINDOWS);
caps.setVersion("108");
// Create driver on Selenium Grid URL
WebDriver driver = new RemoteWebDriver(hubUrl, caps);This allows the grid to automatically route your test to an available Win 10 Edge node!
Integrating with BrowserStack’s Cloud Selenium Grid
While building your own grid infrastructure is totally doable, I suggest checking out BrowserStack.
Based on my experience, BrowserStack makes scaling test automation incredibly simple by handling everything behind the scenes:
- 2000+ real mobile devices, browsers, and OS combinations
- Intelligent test distribution for 5x faster test completion
- Automatic desired capability generation
- Debugging and troubleshooting for flakes
Simply select your target OS, browser, device and they output the Java code snippet for capabilities prepopulated!
This allows concentrating on your test logic rather than laborious capability configuration.
I can’t remember the last time I manually coded capabilities from scratch!
Wrap Up
With browser and device fragmentation increasing exponentially, having robust test automation is crucial for any dev team. Mastering desired capabilities unlocks the real power of Selenium for cross browser testing.
Now that you’ve seen techniques for distributed test configuration, try applying capabilities today to improve your team’s automated testing approaches! Feel free to reach out if you have any other questions come up along your journey.
Happy testing!
