Is it possible to start few seleniums for one selenium server? - selenium

Question

Is this valid code?
selenium = new DefaultSelenium("localhost", 4444, "*iehta",
"http://www.google.com/");
selenium.start();
...
selenium.stop();
...
selenium.start();
...
selenium.stop();

Answer 1

There's nothing wrong with having multiple browsers open (what you call "seleniums"). In fact, it's the only way you can test certain applications. Imagine an application that has an administrative UI and an end-user UI, where you make changes on the admin side and verify their effects on the user side. You can either write your test to jump back and forth between the two on the same browser session, or you can open two browsers, one for each aspect of the application. The former is the usual technique, but the latter is much cleaner.

Answer 2

And why do you think it shouldn't be safe? unless it works ok it's fine, If it doesn't than recreate the DefaultSelenium object again, it won't slow down your code anyway

Answer 3

You should usually keep start() and stop() as you set up and tear down methods. While using TestNG you can annonate then with #BeforeClass and #AfterClass annonations. Hence browser would be launched and shut down only before and after a test method in a class.
b/w did you support Selenium Proposal on area51 - http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/4693/selenium
This proposal is backed by SeleniumHQ and we need more users to commit to it to make it see day of light.

Answer 4

That was my fault.
Unexpected behaviour caused by this code and occurs because I stop selenium two times (selenium object never become null):
public class SeleniumController {
private static Selenium selenium;
public static Selenium startNewSelenium(){
// if already exists stop it and replace with new one
if(selenium != null){
selenium.stop();
}
selenium = createNewSelenium(getCurContext());
return selenium;
}
public static void stopSelenium() {
if(selenium != null){
selenium.stop();
}
}
private static Selenium createNewSelenium(TestContext testContext){
TestProperties testProps = new TestProperties(testContext);
ExtendedSelenium selenium = new ExtendedSelenium("localhost", RemoteControlConfiguration.DEFAULT_PORT,
testProps.getBrowser(), testProps.getServerUrl());
selenium.start();
selenium.useXpathLibrary("javascript-xpath");
selenium.allowNativeXpath("false");
return selenium;
}
}
The correct class code is:
public class SeleniumController {
private static Selenium selenium;
public static Selenium startNewSelenium(){
// if already exists stop it and replace with new one
stopSelenium();
selenium = createNewSelenium(getCurContext());
return selenium;
}
public static void stopSelenium() {
if(selenium != null){
selenium.stop();
selenium = null;
}
}
private static Selenium createNewSelenium(TestContext testContext){
TestProperties testProps = new TestProperties(testContext);
ExtendedSelenium selenium = new ExtendedSelenium("localhost", RemoteControlConfiguration.DEFAULT_PORT,
testProps.getBrowser(), testProps.getServerUrl());
selenium.start();
selenium.useXpathLibrary("javascript-xpath");
selenium.allowNativeXpath("false");
return selenium;
}
}