Frameworks in Selenium WebDriver

What is Framework?
      A framework is considered to be a combination of set protocols, rules, standards and guidelines that can be incorporated so that maintenance and Testing of project is simple, reliable, reusable, repeatable, reportable and cost effective.

Test Automation Frameworks:

1. Module Based Testing Framework:
   
      It is based on one of the popularly known OOPs concept – Abstraction. The framework divides the entire “Application Under Test” into number of logical and isolated modules. For each module, we create a separate and independent test script. Thus, when these test scripts taken together builds a larger test script representing more than one modules. These modules are separated by an abstraction layer in such a way that the changes made in the sections of the application doesn’t yields affects on this module.
2. Library Architecture Testing Framework:
      It is fundamentally and foundationally built on Module Based Testing Framework with some additional advantages. Instead of dividing the application under test into test scripts, we segregate the application into functions or rather common functions can be used by the other parts of the application as well. Thus we create a common library constituting of common functions for the application under test. Therefore, these libraries can be called within the test scripts whenever required. The basic fundamental behind the framework is to determine the common steps and group them into functions under a library and call those functions in the test scripts whenever required.
3. Data Driven Testing Framework:
   
      While automating or testing any application, at times it may be required to test the same functionality multiple times with the different set of input data. Thus, in such cases, we can’t let the test data embedded in the test script. Hence it is advised to retain test data into some external data base outside the test scripts. Data Driven Testing Framework helps the user segregate the test script logic and the test data from each other. It lets the user store the test data into an external database. The external databases can be property files, xml files, excel files, text files, CSV files, ODBC repositories etc. The data is conventionally stored in “Key-Value” pairs. Thus, the key can be used to access and populate the data within the test scripts.
4. Keyword Driven Testing Framework:
   
      The Keyword driven testing framework is an extension to Data driven Testing Framework in a sense that it not only segregates the test data from the scripts, it also keeps the certain set of code belonging to the test script into an external data file. These set of code are known as Keywords and hence the framework is so named. Key words are self-guiding as to what actions needs to be performed on the application. The keywords and the test data are stored in a tabular like structure and thus it is also popularly regarded as Table driven Framework. Take a notice that keywords and test data are entities independent of the automation tool being used.
5. Hybrid Testing Framework:
   
      As the name suggests, the Hybrid Testing Framework is a combination of more than one above mentioned frameworks. The best thing about such a setup is that it leverages the benefits of all kinds of associated frameworks.
6. Behavior Driven Development Framework:
   
      It allows automation of functional validations in easily readable and understandable format to Business Analysts, Developers, Testers, etc. Such frameworks do not necessarily require the user to be acquainted with programming language. There are different tools available for BDD like cucumber, Jbehave etc. Details of BDD framework are discussed later in Cucumber tutorial. We have also discussed details on Gherkin language to write test cases in Cucumber.