What is the difference between Selenium RC and Selenium web driver?

Question

What is the difference between Selenium RC and Selenium web driver?

Answer 1

There are so many differences between Selenium RC and Selenium WebDriver. But the major difference between these two is in their architecture. 

Below are some other differences between them:-

Talking about Selenium RC, it is the predecessor of Selenium WebDriver. Selenium RC stands for Selenium Remote Control. The reason it is called remote control because you do not directly interact with the browser, instead you use an HTTP proxy to control the browser remotely and this is what exactly Selenium RC does. Selenium RC has a server which is coded in Java which acts as an HTTP proxy. What these servers do is they translate the command received over HTTP into Javascript and ‘injected’ javascript functions into the browser when the browser was loaded and then used its javascript to drive the AUT within the browser. Because of this architecture, Selenium RC is the very complex and heavyweight which many issues while test case execution due to heavy JavaScript injection in the browser and same-origin policy violation. The APIs written in RC were dictionary-based API in which all the methods were exposed in a single class. Not much Object Oriented. If you are very much interested in learning Selenium RC you must have a look at the following video tutorial.

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Now coming to Selenium WebDriver, on the other hand, Selenium WebDriver interacts with the browser natively. It uses the browser's native support for automation to drive them without using the support of the selenium server. WebDrive has a driver for each browser. For example, running a test on Firefox, WebDriver will use Firefox Driver to drive the automation test.  Because of this, it provides better interaction with the browser then Selenium RC. The APIs written for WebDriver is completely object-oriented which makes it easier to work with. If you are looking to have a certificate in Selenium then you must take up the following Selenium Training Course.