Search icon CANCEL
Arrow left icon
Explore Products
Best Sellers
New Releases
Books
Videos
Audiobooks
Learning Hub
Conferences
Free Learning
Arrow right icon
Arrow up icon
GO TO TOP
Mastering Selenium WebDriver 3.0

You're reading from   Mastering Selenium WebDriver 3.0 Boost the performance and reliability of your automated checks by mastering Selenium WebDriver

Arrow left icon
Product type Paperback
Published in Jun 2018
Publisher Packt
ISBN-13 9781788299671
Length 376 pages
Edition 2nd Edition
Languages
Tools
Arrow right icon
Author (1):
Arrow left icon
Mark Collin Mark Collin
Author Profile Icon Mark Collin
Mark Collin
Arrow right icon
View More author details
Toc

Table of Contents (15) Chapters Close

Preface 1. Creating a Fast Feedback Loop 2. Producing the Right Feedback When Failing FREE CHAPTER 3. Exceptions Are Actually Oracles 4. The Waiting Game 5. Working with Effective Page Objects 6. Utilizing the Advanced User Interactions API 7. JavaScript Execution with Selenium 8. Keeping It Real 9. Hooking Docker into Selenium 10. Selenium – the Future 11. Other Books You May Enjoy Appendix A: Contributing to Selenium 1. Appendix B: Working with JUnit 2. Appendix C: Introduction to Appium

Going headless

Going headless seems to be all the rage these days, so let's have a look at how we can add support a headless browser to our burgeoning framework.

It's actually a relatively simple change; first, we are going to use this code to modify our POM to add a <headless> property (we are going to set it to true because you are always going to want to start of running things in headless mode, right?):

<properties>
<project.build.sourceEncoding>UTF-
8</project.build.sourceEncoding>
<project.reporting.outputEncoding>UTF-
8</project.reporting.outputEncoding>
<java.version>1.8</java.version>
<!-- Dependency versions -->
<selenium.version>3.12.0</selenium.version>
<testng.version>6.14.3</testng.version>
<!-- Plugin versions -->
<driver-binary-downloader-maven-plugin.version>1.0.17
</driver-binary-downloader-maven-plugin.version>
<maven-compiler-plugin.version>3.7.0
</maven-compiler-plugin.version>
<maven-failsafe-plugin.version>2.21.0
</maven-failsafe-plugin.version>
<!-- Configurable variables -->
<threads>1</threads>
<browser>firefox</browser>
<overwrite.binaries>false</overwrite.binaries>
<headless>true</headless>
</properties>

Then, we need to pass that in through maven-failsafe-plugin:

<plugin>
<groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
<artifactId>maven-failsafe-plugin</artifactId>
<version>${maven-failsafe-plugin.version}</version>
<configuration>
<parallel>methods</parallel>
<threadCount>${threads}</threadCount>
<systemPropertyVariables>
<browser>${browser}</browser>
<headless>${headless}</headless>
<!--Set properties passed in by the driver binary
downloader-->
<webdriver.chrome.driver>${webdriver.chrome.driver}
</webdriver.chrome.driver>
<webdriver.ie.driver>${webdriver.ie.driver}
</webdriver.ie.driver>
<webdriver.opera.driver>${webdriver.opera.driver}
</webdriver.opera.driver>
<webdriver.gecko.driver>${webdriver.gecko.driver}
</webdriver.gecko.driver>
<webdriver.edge.driver>${webdriver.edge.driver}
</webdriver.edge.driver>
</systemPropertyVariables>
</configuration>
<executions>
<execution>
<goals>
<goal>integration-test</goal>
<goal>verify</goal>
</goals>
</execution>
</executions>
</plugin>

Finally, we will use this code to update our DriverType enum to read in the new headless system property and apply it to the CHROME and FIREFOX entries:

package com.masteringselenium.config;

import org.openqa.selenium.chrome.ChromeDriver;
import org.openqa.selenium.chrome.ChromeOptions;
import org.openqa.selenium.edge.EdgeDriver;
import org.openqa.selenium.edge.EdgeOptions;
import org.openqa.selenium.firefox.FirefoxDriver;
import org.openqa.selenium.firefox.FirefoxOptions;
import org.openqa.selenium.ie.InternetExplorerDriver;
import org.openqa.selenium.ie.InternetExplorerOptions;
import org.openqa.selenium.opera.OperaDriver;
import org.openqa.selenium.opera.OperaOptions;
import org.openqa.selenium.remote.CapabilityType;
import org.openqa.selenium.remote.DesiredCapabilities;
import org.openqa.selenium.remote.RemoteWebDriver;
import org.openqa.selenium.safari.SafariDriver;
import org.openqa.selenium.safari.SafariOptions;

import java.util.HashMap;

public enum DriverType implements DriverSetup {


FIREFOX {
public RemoteWebDriver getWebDriverObject
(DesiredCapabilities capabilities) {
FirefoxOptions options = new FirefoxOptions();
options.merge(capabilities);
options.setHeadless(HEADLESS);

return new FirefoxDriver(options);
}
},
CHROME {
public RemoteWebDriver getWebDriverObject
(DesiredCapabilities capabilities) {
HashMap<String, Object> chromePreferences =
new HashMap<>();
chromePreferences.put("profile.password_manager_enabled"
, false);

ChromeOptions options = new ChromeOptions();
options.merge(capabilities);
options.setHeadless(HEADLESS);
options.addArguments("--no-default-browser-check");
options.setExperimentalOption("prefs",
chromePreferences);

return new ChromeDriver(options);
}
},
IE {
public RemoteWebDriver getWebDriverObject
(DesiredCapabilities capabilities) {
InternetExplorerOptions options = new
InternetExplorerOptions();
options.merge(capabilities);
options.setCapability(CapabilityType.ForSeleniumServer.
ENSURING_CLEAN_SESSION, true);
options.setCapability(InternetExplorerDriver.
ENABLE_PERSISTENT_HOVERING, true);
options.setCapability(InternetExplorerDriver.
REQUIRE_WINDOW_FOCUS, true);

return new InternetExplorerDriver(options);
}
},
EDGE {
public RemoteWebDriver
getWebDriverObject(DesiredCapabilities
capabilities) {
EdgeOptions options = new EdgeOptions();
options.merge(capabilities);

return new EdgeDriver(options);
}
},
SAFARI {
public RemoteWebDriver getWebDriverObject
(DesiredCapabilities capabilities) {
SafariOptions options = new SafariOptions();
options.merge(capabilities);

return new SafariDriver(options);
}
},
OPERA {
public RemoteWebDriver getWebDriverObject
(DesiredCapabilities capabilities) {
OperaOptions options = new OperaOptions();
options.merge(capabilities);

return new OperaDriver(options);
}
};

public final static boolean HEADLESS =
Boolean.getBoolean("headless");
}

We can now run our project again exactly the same way as before:

mvn clean verify -Dthreads=2

You will see the test start up again, but this time you won't see a browser window pop up. Everything should work exactly as before and the tests should pass as expected. If you want to see the browser window pop up again, you can just set headless to false:

mvn clean verify -Dthreads=2 -Dheadless=false

What happened to GhostDriver?

You may have noticed that I haven't mentioned GhostDriver or PhantomJS at all in the headless section. That's because PhatomJS is no longer under active development and GhostDriver no longer has a core maintainer. PhantomJS is still available and it's possible to get GhostDriver up and running. However, you are then testing with these issues:

  • An out-of-date rendering engine (an old version of QTWebkit)
  • A JavaScript engine that is not used in any of the major browsers
  • A tool that is not completely thread safe

With the release of headless modes from ChromeDriver and FirefoxDriver, it just doesn't make sense to keep using PhantomJS. It was great in its heyday, but it just not a useful tool to use with Selenium any more.

lock icon The rest of the chapter is locked
Register for a free Packt account to unlock a world of extra content!
A free Packt account unlocks extra newsletters, articles, discounted offers, and much more. Start advancing your knowledge today.
Unlock this book and the full library FREE for 7 days
Get unlimited access to 7000+ expert-authored eBooks and videos courses covering every tech area you can think of
Renews at $19.99/month. Cancel anytime