Factory Design Pattern in Selenium

  

What is the Factory Design Pattern?

The Factory Design Pattern is a creational design pattern used to create objects without exposing the instantiation logic to the client.

In Selenium, it's commonly used to:

• Initialize different browsers (Chrome, Firefox, Edge, etc.)

• Return the correct WebDriver object based on input

Why Use Factory Pattern in Selenium?

Advantage	Description
Centralized object creation	All drivers created in one place
Scalable	Easily add support for new browsers
Clean code	Avoids if-else or switch clutter in tests
Promotes abstraction	Clients don’t know the exact class being used

Example: Factory Pattern for Browser Initialization

Project Structure

FactoryDesignPatternSelenium/
├── pom.xml
└── src/
    └── test/
        ├── java/
        │   ├── factory/
        │   │   ├── DriverFactory.java
        │   └── tests/
        │       └── LoginTest.java

Step 1: Add below maven dependencies in pom.xml

<dependencies>
    <dependency>
        <groupId>org.seleniumhq.selenium</groupId>
        <artifactId>selenium-java</artifactId>
        <version>4.18.1</version>
    </dependency>
</dependencies>

Step 2: DriverFactory.java

package factory;

import org.openqa.selenium.WebDriver;
import org.openqa.selenium.chrome.ChromeDriver;
import org.openqa.selenium.firefox.FirefoxDriver;

public class DriverFactory {

    public static WebDriver getDriver(String browserType) {
        WebDriver driver = null;

        switch (browserType.toLowerCase()) {
            case "chrome":
                driver = new ChromeDriver();
                break;

            case "firefox":
                driver = new FirefoxDriver();
                break;

            default:
                throw new IllegalArgumentException("❌ Unsupported browser: " + browserType);
        }

        return driver;
    }
}

Step 3: LoginTest.java

package tests;

import factory.DriverFactory;
import org.openqa.selenium.By;
import org.openqa.selenium.WebDriver;
import org.testng.annotations.Test;

public class LoginTest {

    @Test
    public void testLoginWithFactoryPattern() {
        // Get browser from factory
        WebDriver driver = DriverFactory.getDriver("chrome");

        driver.get("https://example.com/login");

        // Perform login
        driver.findElement(By.id("username")).sendKeys("user1");
        driver.findElement(By.id("password")).sendKeys("pass123");
        driver.findElement(By.id("login")).click();

        // Add assertions here if needed

        driver.quit();
    }
}

Summary

Component	Role
DriverFactory	Creates WebDriver objects based on input
LoginTest	Calls factory to get a browser driver
TestNG (optional)	For structured test execution

Extendability

You can extend DriverFactory to support:

• Edge, Safari, RemoteWebDriver, Headless Chrome

• Configuration via .properties or JSON

• WebDriverManager support (auto-managing drivers)