Does Selenium need display monitor - selenium

I am using Selenium to open a web site, login and copy some information from one web site. However it is happening on my work station and have a display monitor.
my IT team wants to move this process to a virtual server which does not have a monitor.
1.Will this work - even if we install Chrome of Firefox on the server
2. Can we Chrome - headless to make this happen
3. Any other way - we can think of using Xserver
Please let me know.

No . To run your script you don't need to have monitor. You can access your virtual machine through remote connection and you can start the execution from that machine. Once the execution started, you can close the remote desktop session and execution will continue to run on remote machine or virtual server.
I hope this helps. Please let me know if you have any further questions.
1.Will this work - even if we install Chrome or Firefox on the server - Yes it will work
2.Can we Chrome - headless to make this happen - If you are going to use virtual server just for execution,then you don't need to run in headless mode. Headless execution is needed for environments where you don't need a visible UI shell. Below code will help you run your script in headless mode
from selenium import webdriver
from selenium.webdriver.chrome.options import Options
options = Options()
options.add_argument('--headless')
options.add_argument('--disable-gpu') # Last I checked this was necessary.
driver = webdriver.Chrome("/usr/local/bin/chromedriver", chrome_options=options)
driver.get("https://google.com")
#code to extract the details
driver.quit()
3.Any other way - we can think of using Xserver - Not sure

Chrome headless should solve your problem here -- I've done this in the past with some of my automation and had success.
Just remember to use ChromeOptions to add the --headless flag. You may need to tweak some other ChromeOptions as well -- I also had to add --disable-gpu and --window-size=1920,1200 to get mine working just right.

Related

Selenium test's crashing on Jenkins because of virtual machine memory

Im testing some selenium test's in Jenkins and they are crashing, I read in a stackoverflow post that it is because Jenkins uses a virtual machine and it can be a memory problem, the solution is to use somethink like this: chrome_options.add_argument('--disable-dev-shm-usage') but the problem is that I dont know where I should put this code in order to solve the problem, I dont know if I use the code on docker.compose or in the tests-selenium.side.
chrome_options.add_argument('--disable-dev-shm-usage')
This is a chrome option, add this (tests-selenium.side) where you have Options instance.
You must have
options = webdriver.ChromeOptions()
written in your code somewhere.
Then redeploy your script in Jenkins VM and it should work.

Phantomjs jquery dialog popup

I can handle it with FF web driver (selenium python) but when I change phantomjs the driver .it didnt handle it. is it possible to handle it?
the program must work on server so what must I do?
In short, no, this is not currently possible. The PhantomJS ghostdriver does not implement the primitives for handling alerts/prompts. See https://github.com/detro/ghostdriver/issues/20
This is also unlikely to change since development of PhantomJS has been discontinued.
the program must work on server so what must I do?
Your best option is to use the headless versions of Chrome or Firefox, which can run in a headless environment like PhantomJS just fine. Both Chrome (chromedriver) and Firefox (geckodriver) implement the necessary primitives for handling alerts/prompts.
Another option is that you can use a virtual screen program (e.g. xvfb) to enable you to use a headed browser in a headless environment.

Is there a way to test web application using Selenium and either Driver Firefox or Chrome on a server Centos7 without graphical interface?

On my local machine, I arrived to test my applications with Selenium with any problems.
But, when I'm doing the same operations on a server Centos7 (I have no graphical interface), I've many errors such as web element not found.
I'm using Docker containers for selenium (hub and nodes). The installation is OK and I can see my drivers on Http://:4444/grid/console.
Does Selenium require a graphical interface for its work?
Yes. Selenium requires the browser GUI to be present - which is also called viewport.
If you want that Selenium execution happen, without the browser GUI to be present, then you need to use a headless browser, which , as the name suggests is headless, which means there would be no GUI for them.
Examples of these headless browser include PhantomJS- link. Now Chrome also has a headless mode - link, which you can specify using ChromeOptions. Cheers!

What's difference between protractor (Selenium webdriver) VS ghostdriver (phantomjs webdriver)?

I would like to make it clear about the difference between protractor VS ghostdriver.
With protractor:
start selenium web server for testing.
multiple browser testing.
whenever it start testing, it open the browser.
With ghostdriver:
start phantomjs web server.
can be config multiple browser too.
can run separate with selenium or integrate with selenium.
My question is PhantomJS webdriver can run alone without selenium webdriver, multiple browsers and good for CI. Why do we need to run selenium and integrate selenium with phantomjs using ghostdriver?
While I'm not entirely sure I understand your question, I'll take a stab at answering it. With WebDriver, driving a browser is done via a standardized JSON-over-HTTP wire protocol. This means that you need a "server" component that understands the wire protocol to drive any particular browser. For each of the major desktop browsers (Internet Explorer, Chrome, and Firefox), there is a server component that your WebDriver code talks to (IEDriverServer.exe, chromedriver.exe, or a Firefox browser extension, respectively). PhantomJS also implements a server component that understands the WebDriver wire protocol, so the same high-level WebDriver code can be used with PhantomJS that is used with other browsers. Note that the Selenium server is not required to drive any of the browsers on the local machine.
Now, since the protocol used is simply transmitted over HTTP, that gives WebDriver the opportunity to run the WebDriver code on one machine, while driving a browser located on an entirely different machine. That's where the Selenium server comes in. The Selenium server starts an HTTP server that understands the WebDriver JSON wire protocol. When that server receives a WebDriver command, it can forward that command to another "server" component, either running on that machine (as a standalone remote server), or on yet another machine running another instance of the Selenium server (in a "grid" configuration).
So to answer your question, yes, WebDriver code can be executed against PhantomJS without using the Selenium server. It can likewise be executed against Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome, Safari, and some versions of Opera, all without using the Selenium server. Notice that all of this is true without mentioning Protractor at all. Since Protractor is based on WebDriverJS, as long as there's a "server" component running, whether that's a Selenium server, chromedriver.exe, IEDriverServer.exe, or PhantomJS, the driver should be able to communicate with and drive that browser. Looking at the code, it appears that WebDriverJS (and, by extension, Protractor), should be able to execute against Chrome and PhantomJS without requiring the Selenium server, but I don't know enough about Protractor's wrapping of WebDriverJS to speak with authority.

Run Selenium tests in one browser while using a second browser window

I am running Selenium automation test in one browser, but at the same time, I want to open the browser in another window and do something like checking mail, googling email then active mode or focus is coming to the current working window, not the automation test run browser.
Is it possible to work on the browser while automation test is run?
In general, when doing UI automation, you cannot use the test machine to do any other tasks that involve using the keyboard or mouse.
Since WebDriver automation performs keyboard and mouse input, such as typing text and clicking items, you will be constantly interfering by taking focus away from the WebDriver instance of the browser and doing your own mouse and keyboard interaction in other applications.
This will adversely affect both you and the automation, with neither being able to do what they want to do!
You should either use a separate test machine, or setup a virtual machine using software such as VirtualBox (free).
Did you try doing that?
Selenium uses WebDriver to communicate with a specific instance of a browser, not the currently focused window. So you should be able do continue to use other instances of browser windows. The best thing to do would be try.
If it isn't working, I would recommend getting a VM up and running and using that as your test environment. Generally that is the way I work to keep everything separate.
I ran my tests on Firefox and then used chrome on the side. Otherwise, run your tests on a remote machine.
You can do 2 things
1. Use a third tool to run test cases like Jenkins. so that test will run in memory.
2. If you are using firefox you can create a seperate firefox profile so that if you use firefox at the same time there should be any issue.
To Create new FF profile use below code:
FirefoxProfile profile = new FirefoxProfile();
profile.setAcceptUntrustedCertificates(false);
profile.setAssumeUntrustedCertificateIssuer(true);
DesiredCapabilities dc = DesiredCapabilities.firefox();
dc.setCapability(FirefoxDriver.PROFILE, profile);
WebDriver driver = new FirefoxDriver(dc);