How to setup Selenium RC to test any website on the internet?

Question

I'm new in using Selenium.

Selenium IDE is a user-friendly firefox plugin. I have no problem in using it. However, I found that the documentation for other Selenium tools such as Selenium RC and Selenium Core is quite confusing for beginners. It seems that the author assume that the readers already have deep knowledge in using these tools.

For example, when I try to figure out how to setup Selenium RC to test a webserver, the only diagram i can find from the Selenium website is this:

http://www.sparksupport.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/selenium-rc.png

From this diagram, i can't even see which one is the webserver under test and where should i install the Selenium components.

At first I thought this diagram is a bit weird and i should be able to get a better diagram from other websites. I was surprised to find that almost all Selenium RC setup diagram on the internet are similar to this diagram (clones). No one has ever attempted to create a different diagram or give more description for Selenium RC setup.

Appreciate if anyone can give me guidance on how to setup Selenium RC. The things that i want to know are:

1. Can i use Selenium RC to test any website on the Internet?
2. How to setup Selenium RC?
3. Is my current setup correct? My current setup is like this: In a LAN network which has access to the Internet, I have 3 servers. Server-1 comes with IE8, Server-2 comes with Firefox 3.6. Server-3 will be used as the Selenium RC server. So, Selenium RC in server-3 will remotely control server-1 and server-2 to start up IE and FF. Server-1 and 2 will use server-3 as the HTTP proxy to connect to any webserver on the Internet. If I want to test a website such as yahoo.com, I can write Selenium script and let it run in Server-3 to control the IE and FF in server-1 and 2.

Answer 1

This info is related to Selenium 1. Selenium system consists of 3 parts:

1. selenium core - that is javascript library that will be used to simulate user actions
2. selenium RC - this is selenium-server.jar - mediation JETTY server that will receive requests from selenium client. Selenium Server RC (Remote Control) should be on the same machine where the Browser placed
3. Selenium client - java/ruby/... library that you will be use with your tests to communicate with Selenium RC.

It will be helpful if you provide language that you use for your tests and other technical details.

About your questions:

1. can
2. • type in command line -> java selenium-server.jar
   • or you can use class SeleniumServer in your program
3. please use text formatting when ask questions.
   • server-1 will has IE8 and SeleiumServer
   • server-2 will has FF and yet one SeleniumServer
   • server-3 will has you client tests

FYI - you can run all together on one PC