Selenium testing without browser

Question

I use Selenium RC for testing. Now to perform a load test, I want to run parallel test cases. Is there any way to run them without opening a browser?

• Salvador Dali: possible duplicate of Is it possible to hide the browser in Selenium RC?

Answer 1

Chrome now has a headless mode:

op = webdriver.ChromeOptions()
op.add_argument('headless')
driver = webdriver.Chrome(options=op)

• O.rka: this should be the answer
• Tiffany F.: UserWarning: Selenium support for PhantomJS has been deprecated, please use headless versions of Chrome or Firefox instead warnings.warn('Selenium support for PhantomJS has been deprecated, please use headless '
• basilisk: how can i use this if I additionally want to copy something to clipboard and then paste it? I tried it but it only works when the browser opens

Answer 2

Since PhantomJS has been deprecated, using headless versions of Firefox would be a viable option.

from selenium import webdriver
from selenium.webdriver.firefox.options import Options
options = Options()
options.add_argument("--headless")
driver = webdriver.Firefox(options=options)
driver.get('https://www.google.com/')

• toking: this work in my macbook. I wonder why it would discretely open a firefox icon (looks like an idle icon) on the right side of my Dock, but yes you can't see what is happening. So I guess, it is operating headless indeed.

Answer 3

Try this code:

op = webdriver.ChromeOptions()
op.add_argument('headless')
driver = webdriver.Chrome(options=op)

Answer 4

To set up on Centos (do all installation as root)

Install pip Download https://bootstrap.pypa.io/get-pip.py

python get-pip.py

Installing selenium If you have pip on your system, you can simply install or upgrade the Python bindings:

pip install -U selenium

Alternately, you can download the source distribution from PyPI (e.g. selenium-2.53.1.tar.gz), unarchive it, and run:

python setup.py install

install the program: pyvirtualdisplay

pip install pyvirtualdisplay
yum install Xvfb libXfont Xorg

Then modify your script and get this.

from pyvirtualdisplay import Display
from selenium import webdriver
from selenium.webdriver.common.by import By
from selenium.webdriver.common.keys import Keys
from selenium.webdriver.support.ui import Select
from selenium.common.exceptions import NoSuchElementException
from selenium.common.exceptions import NoAlertPresentException
import unittest, time, re
class SeleniumDemo(unittest.TestCase):
 def setUp(self):
 self.display = Display(visible=0, size=(800, 600))
 self.display.start()
 self.driver = webdriver.Firefox()
 self.driver.implicitly_wait(30)
 self.base_url = "http://www.soastastore.com/"
 self.verificationErrors = []
 self.accept_next_alert = True
 def tearDown(self):
 self.driver.quit()
 self.display.stop()
 self.assertEqual([], self.verificationErrors)

Answer 5

You can run Selenium headless, take a look at this question/answer: Is it possible to hide the browser in Selenium RC?

Especially for performance load tests, you should have a look at Apache JMeter.

• Mohyt: I already tried Apache JMeter for load testing Of GWT apps. But it not quite successful.

Answer 6

Always follow the Documentation. Here is what selenium doc says. It provide a standalone jar.

• Download the standalone jar. And run it with command

  java -jar selenium-server-standalone.jar
  

• Now you will see a stanalone server started.

• Now set up your webdriver like below and rest part will be as it is.

  driver = webdriver.Remote(command_executor='http://127.0.0.1:4444/wd/hub', desired_capabilities={'browserName': 'htmlunit', 'version': '2', 'javascriptEnabled': True})
  

• Summary code will be like.

  from selenium import webdriver
  from selenium.webdriver.common.desired_capabilities import DesiredCapabilities
  from selenium.webdriver.common.keys import Keys
  driver = webdriver.Remote(command_executor='http://127.0.0.1:4444/wd/hub', 
  desired_capabilities={'browserName': 'htmlunit', 'version': '2', 
  'javascriptEnabled': True})
  driver.get("http://www.python.org")
  assert "Python" in driver.title
  elem = driver.find_element_by_name("q")
  elem.clear()
  elem.send_keys("pycon")
  elem.send_keys(Keys.RETURN)
  assert "No results found." not in driver.page_source
  driver.close()
  

Answer 7

You can simply pass an argument "headless" to test selenium without opening the browser.

op = webdriver.ChromeOptions()
op.add_argument('headless')
driver = webdriver.Chrome(options=op)

This code snippet will provide you exactly what you want.

Answer 8

It is possible, but not with the standard firefox driver / chrome / etc.

You would need to install PhantomJS. Just assign your WebDriver to an instance of phantomJS driver:

driver = webdriver.PhantomJS()

If you run your code now, no browser window will be opened.

• toking: the PhantomJS development is now suspended as per @Hunter and yes I can confirm. phantomjs.org

Answer 9

You can import Options if you don't want to open a web browser.

from selenium import webdriver # for webdriver
from selenium.webdriver.support.ui import WebDriverWait # for implicit and explict waits
from selenium.webdriver.chrome.options import Options # for suppressing the browser

Then in the code:

option = webdriver.ChromeOptions()
option.add_argument('headless')
driver = webdriver.Chrome(options=option)

And continue with the rest of the program.

Answer 10

requirements:

sudo apt-get install xvfb
pip install selenium
pip install PyVirtualDisplay

download chrome driver binary from below link and paste into drivers directory: https://sites.google.com/a/chromium.org/chromedriver/downloads

code:

from selenium import webdriver
from pyvirtualdisplay import Display
with Display(visible=False, size=(800, 600)):
 browser = webdriver.Chrome('drivers/chromedriver')
 browser.get('https://www.example.com')
 print(browser.page_source)
 browser.quit()