Tech Mahindra Automation Testing Interview Questions & Answers

Continuous Integration builds and tests every commit, and Continuous Delivery ships automatically. Automated tests give fast feedback and gate releases.

Encapsulation, inheritance, polymorphism and abstraction. Testers use them to build reusable page classes, base tests and utility libraries.

Docker packages tools in containers so tests run identically everywhere; Selenium Grid and browsers can be started quickly in containers.

It uses the key's hashCode to find a bucket and equals to resolve collisions, giving O(1) average lookups; Java 8 converts long buckets into trees.

Store each driver in a ThreadLocal so every thread gets its own instance and tests do not interfere.

final makes a variable, method or class unchangeable; finally is a block that always runs after try-catch; finalize is a deprecated method called before garbage collection.

id, name, className, tagName, linkText, partialLinkText, CSS selector and XPath. Prefer stable ids or CSS, using XPath when needed.

Click to open the dropdown, then locate the option by its text, e.g. //li[text()='India'], and click it. Add an explicit wait for the animation.

Static members belong to the class and are shared by all instances; non-static members belong to each object.

It manages dependencies through pom.xml, builds the project, runs tests with Surefire and standardises structure across teams.

Keep credentials in external data, parameterise the test with a data provider, reuse a login method in a page class, and clear sessions between roles.

A lightweight text format of key-value pairs and arrays used in API requests and responses, validated field by field in tests.

Re-locate the element after the DOM refreshes, use explicit waits for the refreshed element, don't keep element references for long, or wrap the action in retry logic.

Do not automate it; ask for a test environment where CAPTCHA is disabled or use test keys, or a bypass token agreed with developers.

Automate stable, repetitive, high-risk and data-heavy flows (smoke, regression). Skip one-time tests, frequently changing UI and checks needing human judgement. Compare run frequency × manual time with build and maintenance cost.

A configuration file to define suites, tests, classes, groups, parameters and parallel execution settings.

A design pattern where each page is a class holding its locators and actions, so tests stay readable and a locator change is fixed in one place.

Get getWindowHandles(), loop to find the target, and call driver.switchTo().window(handle); switch back using the stored parent handle.

Cast the driver to JavascriptExecutor and use executeScript, for example to scroll into view or click hidden elements.

It runs tests in parallel across multiple machines and browsers using a hub and nodes, cutting execution time and increasing browser coverage.

Classes like ITestListener that react to events such as test start, success or failure, commonly used for screenshots and reporting.

Use Apache POI for Excel and the Properties class for config files, loaded in a utility class so tests read data instead of hard-coding it.

Use isDisplayed(), isEnabled() and isSelected() on the WebElement before interacting or asserting.

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

Locate rows and columns with XPath such as //table//tr and //td, loop through them to read or click cells, or build the XPath dynamically from the row text.

Running the same test logic with multiple data sets from Excel, CSV, JSON or a database, so coverage increases without duplicating code.

Implicit, explicit (WebDriverWait with ExpectedConditions) and fluent waits; avoid mixing implicit and explicit waits and never rely on Thread.sleep.

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

Implement ITestListener.onTestFailure(): File src = ((TakesScreenshot) driver).getScreenshotAs(OutputType.FILE); then copy it into the reports folder.

If the element is <input type="file">, use element.sendKeys("C:/path/file.pdf"). Use the Robot class or AutoIt only as a last resort for OS dialogs.

== compares references (or primitive values); equals() compares content when overridden, as in String.

Create a job or pipeline that checks out code, runs mvn test, publishes reports and triggers on commits or schedules.

//button[normalize-space()='Login'] //button[contains(text(),'Login')]

@BeforeTest runs once before all methods in a test tag of testng.xml; @BeforeMethod runs before every test method.

Compare effort saved by running automated tests repeatedly against the cost of building and maintaining scripts, counting execution time, defects found earlier and release speed.

throw actually raises an exception object inside a method; throws declares in the method signature that it may pass an exception to the caller.

Arrays have a fixed size and can hold primitives; ArrayList grows dynamically, holds objects and offers helper methods.

Git tracks changes, enables code review, branching and rollback and lets teams collaborate on the framework safely.

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

Use external files or APIs and database setup scripts, generate unique data per run, and clean up afterwards so tests stay independent.

An API client. Add tests in JavaScript, use environments and collections, and run them with Newman in a CI pipeline.

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

A test framework offering annotations, grouping, prioritisation, parallel runs, data providers and reports, which structure and scale Selenium tests.

Hard assert stops the test at the first failure; SoftAssert collects failures and reports them together when assertAll() is called.

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

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

Use the Select class with selectByVisibleText, selectByValue or selectByIndex; for custom dropdowns click and choose from the list of elements.

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

Implicit wait applies globally to element lookups. Explicit wait waits for a specific condition (WebDriverWait + ExpectedConditions). Fluent wait is an explicit wait with custom polling and ignored exceptions.

Use TestNG parallel="methods | classes | tests" with thread-count, keep WebDriver in a ThreadLocal, and use Selenium Grid or a cloud grid for multiple browsers.

Relative locators, improved Grid, W3C compliance, new window or tab creation, Chrome DevTools Protocol access and element-level screenshots.

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.

SOAP is a strict XML protocol with WSDL and WS-Security; REST is a lighter architectural style using HTTP and usually JSON.

ArrayList has fast random access and slower inserts in the middle; LinkedList has fast inserts and deletes but slow access by index.

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

Classes such as Integer and Double that wrap primitive types as objects, needed for collections and for parsing text from web elements.

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

Overloading: same method name, different parameters, in the same class (compile time). Overriding: a subclass redefines a parent method with the same signature (runtime polymorphism). WebDriver driver = new ChromeDriver() is runtime polymorphism.

Use mocks or stubs such as WireMock to simulate the dependency and test your service in isolation.

Maven project → POM with a BasePage → driver factory with ThreadLocal → config files → data-driven utilities (Excel/JSON) → TestNG or Cucumber runner → logging → Extent reports with screenshots on failure → Jenkins pipeline.

Use JavascriptExecutor with window.scrollTo or scrollIntoView, or the Actions class scroll methods in Selenium 4.

Mouse and keyboard actions such as hover, drag and drop, double click, right click and key combinations, built with moveToElement(...).perform().

A try block that automatically closes resources such as file readers or streams, preventing leaks without a finally block.

switchTo().frame(index, name or element) enters the frame, and switchTo().defaultContent() returns to the main page.

ArrayList and LinkedList for lists, HashSet for unique values, HashMap for key-value test data, and Iterator for traversing them, for example collecting web elements in a list.

WebDriver sends commands over HTTP (W3C protocol) to a browser-specific driver such as chromedriver, which controls the actual browser.

Lambdas are short anonymous functions; streams process collections declaratively with filter, map and collect, for example filtering link text from a list of elements.

An abstract class can hold state and concrete methods; an interface defines a contract (with default methods since Java 8). A class extends one abstract class but can implement many interfaces.

Absolute starts from the root (/html/...) and breaks easily; relative starts anywhere with // and is more stable, for example //input[@id='email'].