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I am using Selenium RC to automate some browser operations but I want the browser to be invisible. Is this possible? How? What about Selenium Grid? Can I hide the Selenium RC window also?
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Unfortunately, Selenium does not provide any built-in function for minimizing the browser window. There is only the function for maximizing the window.
We can perform Selenium testing without a browser. This is achieved by triggering the execution in a headless mode. The headless execution can decrease the utilization of key resources and is being adopted widely.
Selenium RC comprises an additional layer of JavaScript known as the core which makes it slower. Selenium RC has complicated and redundant APIs. Selenium RC is not compatible with the HTMLUnit browser (required for headless execution). Selenium RC has in-built HTML report generation features for test results.
There are a few options:
You could use Selenium Grid so that the browser is opened on a completely different machine (or virtual machine) that you can then connect to via VNC or Remote Desktop Connection if you wanted to see the browser. Also, another option: if you run a Jenkins foreground process on that remote server, it can execute your test project on the desktop.
You can run Selenium 'headless' on Linux in XVFB. I've never tried doing this and doubt it's really worth the effort. http://www.alittlemadness.com/2008/03/05/running-selenium-headless/
You can wrap Selenium RC in a Windows service. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/137890 . Except that permissions constraints on later versions of windows will probably prevent Selenium from accessing the desktop like Windows 2000 used to allow us to do.
Another option would be to use something like WebDriver HTMLUnitDriver, which doesn't launch a 'real' browser. http://code.google.com/p/webdriver/ . Also there is a PhantomJS option as well as a 'headless Chrome' that you could use.
Of course there's also the option of using a service like SauceLabs, where you can get your tests to be run in the cloud. After your tests have completed you can watch a video of them running.
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On Linux, you can run WebDriver in a headless (virtual) display to hide the browser. This can be done with Xvfb (X virtual framebuffer).
You can control Xvfb directly from Python code using xvfbwrapper: https://github.com/cgoldberg/xvfbwrapper
Python code for running headless would look like this:
from selenium import webdriver from xvfbwrapper import Xvfb display = Xvfb() display.start() # now Firefox will run in a virtual display. # you will not see the browser. driver = webdriver.Firefox() driver.get('http://www.google.com') print(driver.title) driver.quit() display.stop() Install dependencies on Debian/Ubuntu:
$ sudo apt-get install xvfb $ pip install xvfbwrapper If you love us? You can donate to us via Paypal or buy me a coffee so we can maintain and grow! Thank you!
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