Automation Testing Interview Questions in Chennai

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Page load strategy decides when navigation commands like get() return. Normal, the default, waits for the full load event including images and stylesheets. Eager returns when the DOM is ready (DOMContentLoaded), which speeds up heavy pages. None returns immediately after the initial response. With eager or none you must rely on explicit waits for the elements you need. Set it through options.setPageLoadStrategy(PageLoadStrategy.EAGER).

What is REST Assured?

REST AssuredMedium

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A Java library that makes API tests readable using given-when-then, with easy request building, response validation and JSON path support.

What is the difference between @Test(priority) and dependsOnMethods in TestNG?

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priority only orders tests; a lower number runs first, and a failed test does not stop the others. dependsOnMethods creates a real dependency: if the parent test fails, dependent tests are skipped. Both make tests order-dependent, which hurts parallel runs and isolation, so use them sparingly. Prefer independent tests with their own setup.

What are the main components of Selenium Grid 4?

Selenium Grid & DockerHard

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Grid 4 is split into the Router, which receives all requests, the Distributor, which assigns new sessions to nodes, the Session Map, which records which node owns each session, the New Session Queue, which holds requests waiting for a free slot, the Event Bus, which lets components communicate, and Nodes, which run the browsers. In standalone or hub mode these run in one process, but they can also be deployed separately to scale.

Your UI regression suite has 15 percent flaky failures. How would you bring it under control?

Selenium WebDriverHard

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Measure flakiness per test over many runs and fix the worst first. Typical fixes are replacing sleeps with explicit waits, creating independent test data via API, avoiding shared logins, using stable locators, isolating parallel drivers and stubbing unstable third parties. Quarantine known flaky tests into a separate job so they do not block releases, and set a target like under 2 percent.

Your price comparison test fails because 19.99 + 0.01 is not equal to 20.0. Why?

Core Java for TestersMedium

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double uses binary floating point, which cannot represent many decimal values exactly, so small rounding errors appear. For money, use BigDecimal created from strings and compare with compareTo(), or compare doubles with a tolerance such as Assert.assertEquals(actual, expected, 0.001). Also strip currency symbols and commas before parsing UI text.

How do you pass parameters from testng.xml?

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Define parameter name and value in the XML and read them with @Parameters in the test or configuration method.

How do you pass the WebDriver to page objects in a parallel framework?

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Use a DriverManager with a ThreadLocal<WebDriver>, created in @BeforeMethod and removed in @AfterMethod. Page objects receive the driver through the constructor or get it from DriverManager.getDriver(). Constructor injection is cleaner and easier to test. Never store the driver in a static field shared by all threads, or parallel tests will control each other's browsers.

Tell me about a time your API tests caught a breaking change before the UI tests did.

REST AssuredMedium

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Situation: a backend team renamed a response field during a refactor. Task: our nightly REST Assured suite had to protect the mobile and web clients. Action: schema validation failed within minutes of the merge, and I shared the failing response and the contract with the developer. Result: the field was restored with a deprecation plan before the UI suite even ran, and the team added our schema tests to their pull request checks.

How do you validate a JSON response in REST Assured?

REST AssuredMedium

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Use then().statusCode(200).body("data.id", equalTo(5)), or extract() the response and assert fields with JsonPath.

How would you test an API with rate limiting?

API Testing and CI/CDMedium

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Read the documented limit, then send requests quickly until you exceed it and assert a 429 Too Many Requests response with headers like Retry-After or remaining quota. Wait for the window to reset and confirm requests succeed again. Also check limits are per user or key as designed. Run these tests in isolation so they do not throttle the rest of the suite.

Write a step definition that reads a DataTable as a list of maps.

Cucumber and BDDMedium

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// Given the following users exist @Given("the following users exist") public void usersExist(DataTable table) { List<Map<String, String>> rows = table.asMaps(); for (Map<String, String> row : rows) { userApi.create(row.get("name"), row.get("role")); } }

How do you handle environment-specific configuration?

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Keep URLs and credentials in per-environment config files or variables, choose with a command-line parameter and never hard-code secrets.

What is the Hybrid framework?

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A framework combining data-driven, keyword-driven and POM approaches with reporting and utilities, giving flexibility and reuse.

How do you log requests and responses in REST Assured?

REST AssuredEasy

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Use given().log().all() for the full request and then().log().all() for the full response. To reduce noise, use log().ifValidationFails() on both, which prints only when a test fails. For a whole suite, set RestAssured.enableLoggingOfRequestAndResponseIfValidationFails() or add RequestLoggingFilter and ResponseLoggingFilter in a shared spec. Mask tokens and passwords before logs reach CI.

How do you run tests on multiple browsers in parallel in Jenkins?

Git, Maven and JenkinsHard

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Use a parallel block in the pipeline with a stage per browser, or a matrix directive with axis BROWSER values chrome, firefox and edge. Each branch runs mvn test -Dbrowser=${BROWSER}, ideally against Selenium Grid or containers so agents do not need local browsers. Publish results per branch with clear names so failures show which browser broke.

How do you include and exclude groups in testng.xml?

TestNG FrameworkEasy

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Inside a <test>, add <groups><run><include name="smoke"/><exclude name="broken"/></run></groups>. Only methods in the included groups run, minus excluded ones. Configuration methods must have alwaysRun = true or belong to the groups, or they will be skipped. You can also pass -Dgroups=smoke from Maven Surefire for CI selection.

How do you record videos of tests running on a Docker Selenium Grid?

Selenium Grid & DockerMedium

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Add the selenium/video image as a sidecar container next to each node, sharing the node's display through DISPLAY_CONTAINER_NAME, and mount a folder for the mp4 files. Newer Grid versions also support recording per session by setting the se:recordVideo capability with Dynamic Grid. Name videos with se:name so they match test names. Keep videos only for failed tests or for a few days, because they use a lot of disk space.

What does dependsOnMethods do?

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It makes a test run only after specified tests pass, otherwise it is skipped. Use sparingly as it creates coupled tests.

How does the DataProvider annotation work?

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A method annotated with @DataProvider returns a 2D object array and the test with dataProvider = "name" runs once per row.

What are relative locators in Selenium 4?

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Locators such as above, below, toLeftOf and near that find elements by their position relative to another element.

What is idempotency in REST APIs and why does it matter for testing?

API Testing and CI/CDMedium

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An idempotent operation gives the same result no matter how many times it is called. GET, PUT and DELETE should be idempotent; POST usually is not. Testers verify that repeating a PUT does not create duplicates and that a second DELETE returns a sensible status like 404 or 204. Retries in networks and CI make idempotency important to verify.

Why is XPath slow in Appium and what should you use instead?

Appium Mobile AutomationMedium

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For every XPath query Appium must fetch the full page source of the app, convert it into an XML document and then evaluate the expression, which can take seconds on large screens and is even slower on iOS. Index-based XPath also breaks when layouts change. Use accessibility id first, then resource-id, Android UiAutomator selectors or iOS predicate strings and class chains, which are evaluated natively on the device and are much faster.

What is a constructor and can it be overloaded?

Core Java for TestersMedium

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A special method that initialises an object. It can be overloaded with different parameters, and testers use it to pass the WebDriver into page classes.

How do you handle dynamic elements whose ids change?

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Use CSS or XPath with contains(), starts-with() or stable attributes, relative axes, or data-test attributes agreed with developers.

How do you pass authentication in an API test?

REST AssuredMedium

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Use headers such as Bearer tokens, basic auth, API keys or OAuth flows; fetch a token in a setup step and reuse it.

POST vs PUT vs PATCH?

API Testing and CI/CDMedium

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POST creates a resource, PUT replaces the whole resource (idempotent) and PATCH updates part of it.

Tell me about a time you worked with a team in a different location or time zone on automation.

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Situation: our developers were in another time zone and test failures waited a day for replies. Task: reduce delays. Action: I wrote clear failure reports with screenshots, logs and steps, recorded short videos for complex issues, and set a fixed 30-minute overlap call twice a week. Result: turnaround on defects dropped from two days to about one, and fewer issues bounced back.

Should assertions be written inside page objects?

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Generally no. Page objects should expose state and actions, such as getErrorMessage() or isLoggedIn(), and tests should make the assertions. This keeps page classes reusable across positive and negative tests and keeps the test intent visible. A small exception is a simple check that the correct page has loaded, often done in the constructor or an isAt() method.

What is an API and what are common HTTP methods?

API Testing and CI/CDEasy

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An interface for systems to talk to each other. GET reads, POST creates, PUT replaces, PATCH updates partially and DELETE removes.

During a load test response times rise sharply. Which server-side metrics do you check?

Performance Testing with JMeterMedium

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Check CPU and memory usage of application servers, garbage collection pauses and heap usage for Java services, thread pool and connection pool saturation, database slow queries, locks and connection counts, disk I/O and network bandwidth. Also look at load balancer and cache hit rates and error logs. Correlate the timestamp of the slowdown with these graphs in an APM or monitoring tool to find which resource saturated first.

File upload tests pass locally but fail when they run on a remote Grid. Why?

Selenium Grid & DockerMedium

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sendKeys with a file path sends a path that exists on your test machine, but the browser runs on the remote node where that path does not exist. Set a LocalFileDetector on the RemoteWebDriver, using ((RemoteWebDriver) driver).setFileDetector(new LocalFileDetector()), so Selenium zips and transfers the file to the node first. Alternatively mount the test data folder into the node container. Always use absolute paths.

What are the different types of waits in Selenium?