How to add headers or parameters to an HTTP request handled with Selenium Webdriver?

Question

I'm using Selenium Webdriver for unit testing of a web application. It's used in JUnit tests Despite reading the available documentation extensively and searching around, I could not find a way to:

• Add headers to an HTTP request passed by the driver.
• Add parameters to such a request, as if the driver got his target URL after submitting a form.

It would be possible to create a test web page with an appropriate form and have Webdriver bounce off it to get those parameters automatically, but this is quite an ugly hack. I would like to avoid it, especially for the sake of test atomicity. (This is unit testing.)

Before Wendriver, I was using Spring's MockHttpServletRequest and MockHttpServletResponse to do this, which worked like a charm, but I would like to use the power of Webdriver to assert the target page's contents.

Answer 1

You can try evaluating browsermob-proxy. It helps in manipulating the headers. https://github.com/webmetrics/browsermob-proxy. Integrating with webdriver is simple. You just need to start the driver with the proxy values set.

Answer 2

Might be useful for others who are looking for a solution

This is how I fixed the problem in my case. Hopefully, might be helpful for anyone with a similar setup.

1. Add the ModHeader extension to the chrome browser

How to download the Modheader? Link

ChromeOptions options = new ChromeOptions();
options.addExtensions(new File(C://Downloads//modheader//modheader.crx));

// Set the Desired capabilities 
DesiredCapabilities capabilities = new DesiredCapabilities();
capabilities.setCapability(ChromeOptions.CAPABILITY, options);

// Instantiate the chrome driver with capabilities
WebDriver driver = new RemoteWebDriver(new URL(YOUR_HUB_URL), options);

2. Go to the browser extensions and capture the Local Storage context ID of the ModHeader

3. Navigate to the URL of the ModHeader to set the Local Storage Context

.

// set the context on the extension so the localStorage can be accessed
driver.get("chrome-extension://idgpnmonknjnojddfkpgkljpfnnfcklj/_generated_background_page.html");

Where `idgpnmonknjnojddfkpgkljpfnnfcklj` is the value captured from the Step# 2

4. Now add the headers to the request using Javascript

.

   ((Javascript)driver).executeScript(
         "localStorage.setItem('profiles', JSON.stringify([{  title: 'Selenium', hideComment: true, appendMode: '', 
             headers: [                        
               {enabled: true, name: 'token-1', value: 'value-1', comment: ''},
               {enabled: true, name: 'token-2', value: 'value-2', comment: ''}
             ],                          
             respHeaders: [],
             filters: []
          }]));");

Where token-1, value-1, token-2, value-2 are the request headers and values that are to be added.

5. Now navigate to the required web-application.

   driver.get("your-desired-website");