Handling Browser Authentication using Selenium

Question

Does anyone know about handling Browser Authentication using Selenium or any other tool during automation?

Answer 1

EDIT in 2015:

This answer is outdated. WebDriver nowadays supports authentication! See How to handle authentication popup with Selenium WebDriver using Java

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Original answer:

This is not handled very well by Selenium.

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You can try using http://username:[email protected]/yourpage

instead of just http://example.com/yourpage

However, as far as I know, Firefox will still pop up a browser dialog requesting a confirmation.

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You can try Robot if you're using Java (or any similar tool like AutoIt).

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You could use driver.manage().addCookie() if you're using WebDriver.

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Or a custom FirefoxProfile that has already passed the authentication once.

Answer 2

I spent days on this - literally. Trying to get past browser level authentication within my company network to hit an application. The solution was to use the 'unsername:password@' component within the URL, BUT to add a forward slash at the end of the login URL.

So total login URL looks like this (note the '/' after yourpage):

http://username:[email protected]/yourpage/

Works with Watir, Capybara and Selenium Webdriver.