Error : profile.getTemplateDir is not a function - selenium

Question

I'm trying to implement a multi-browser test with protractor with firefox and chrome. But for the test, I need to change the download path. In chrome, it works but in firefox, the solution I found involved changing the profile of firefox. I also found a way to do it as in the answers of this question Set firefox profile protractor .
But when I try to run multiple instance of navigator alongside of one instance of firefox with modified profile, I always get an error as profile.getTemplateDir is not a function.
Here is the code in my protractor configuration file :
var q = require('q');
var FirefoxProfile = require("selenium-webdriver/firefox").Profile
function getProfiles() {
let deferred = q.defer();
let multiCapabilities = [{
browserName: 'chrome'
}]
deferred.resolve(multiCapabilities);
let firefoxProfile = new FirefoxProfile();
firefoxProfile.setPreference("browser.download.folderList", 2);
firefoxProfile.setPreference("browser.download.manager.showWhenStarting", false);
firefoxProfile.setPreference("browser.download.dir", '/tmp');
let foxCapabilities = {
browserName: 'firefox',
firefox_profile: firefoxProfile
};
multiCapabilities.push(foxCapabilities);
deferred.resolve(multiCapabilities);
return deferred.promise;
}
exports.config = {
seleniumAddress: "http://localhost:4444/wd/hub",
specs: [
'spec.js'
],
framework: 'jasmine2',
getMultiCapabilities: getProfiles,
jasmineNodeOpts: {
defaultTimeoutInterval: 30000
},
};
Does anyone knows why this error is triggered and how to resolve it ?
Thanks

Answer 1

So I have digged into this issue debugging the code and this seems to be limitation/bug currently in selenium web-driver
When getMultiCapabilities returns multiple browsers, then protractor creates a fork of the process to run the test
This forked process is then sent the profile you created as JSON
The childprocess can only receive JSON data in form of text and not in form of a Profile object
Later createGeckodriver function is called with profile object. But as the code of createGeckodriver it is always expecting a profile object
So this code needs to be fixed in Selenium webdriver itself and it should check if the profile sent is already encoded or not. Also the code you have used needs to be fixed to encode the profile. Below is what would work once Selenium driver is patched to allow sending encoded profile
var firefox = require('selenium-webdriver/firefox');
var q = require('q');
var FirefoxProfile = require("selenium-webdriver/firefox").Profile
var makeFirefoxProfile = function (preferenceMap) {
var deferred = q.defer();
var firefoxProfile = new FirefoxProfile();
for (var key in preferenceMap) {
firefoxProfile.setPreference(key, preferenceMap[key]);
}
firefoxProfile.encode().then(function(encodedProfile){
cap = {
"browserName": "firefox",
marionette: true,
"firefox_profile": encodedProfile,
};
deferred.resolve(cap);
});
return deferred.promise;
};
exports.config = {
seleniumAddress: "http://localhost:4444/wd/hub",
specs: [
'spec.js'
],
framework: 'jasmine',
getMultiCapabilities: function () {
return q.all([
{
browserName: 'chrome'
},
makeFirefoxProfile(
{
"browser.download.folderList": 2,
"browser.download.dir": "/path/to/save/downloads",
"browser.helperApps.neverAsk.saveToDisk": "application/zip"
}
)
]);
},
jasmineNodeOpts: {
defaultTimeoutInterval: 180000
}
};