How to start Selenium standalone server from a PHP script?

Question

In my PHP script I am using php-webdriver library with Edge webdriver to get data from a web page and I need to start Selenium standalone server from the script. I copied selenium-server-4.35.0.jar, msedgedriver.exe and NodeWebDriver.json to the current user directory C:\Users\pnfst, and also created 2 bat files for running hab and for running node: selenium-server-hub.bat and selenium-server-node.bat respectively.

NodeWebDriver.json

{
 "capabilities": [
 {
 "browserName": "MicrosoftEdge",
 "maxInstances": 5,
 "seleniumProtocol": "WebDriver",
 "platform": "WINDOWS"
 },
 {
 "browserName": "firefox",
 "maxInstances": 5,
 "seleniumProtocol": "WebDriver",
 "platform": "WINDOWS"
 },
 {
 "browserName": "chrome",
 "maxInstances": 5,
 "seleniumProtocol": "WebDriver",
 "platform": "WINDOWS"
 },
 {
 "browserName": "internet explorer",
 "maxInstances": 1,
 "seleniumProtocol": "WebDriver",
 "platform": "WINDOWS"
 }
 ],
 "proxy": "org.openqa.grid.selenium.proxy.DefaultRemoteProxy",
 "maxSession": 5,
 "port": 5555,
 "register": true,
 "registerCycle": 5000,
 "hub": "http://Администратор:[email protected]:4444",
 "nodeStatusCheckTimeout": 5000,
 "nodePolling": 5000,
 "role": "node",
 "unregisterIfStillDownAfter": 60000,
 "downPollingLimit": 2,
 "debug": false,
 "servlets": [],
 "withoutServlets": [],
 "custom": {}
}

selenium-server-hub.bat

java -Dwebdriver.edge.driver=msedgedriver.exe -jar ".\selenium-server-4.35.0.jar" hub

selenium-server-node.bat

java -Dwebdriver.edge.driver=msedgedriver.exe -jar ".\selenium-server-4.35.0.jar" node --config ".\NodeWebDriver.json"

Then I tried to start Selenium standalone server from PHP using exec as follows.

Variant 1

$hubCommand = 'C:\\Program Files\\Java\\jdk-24\\bin\\java.exe -jar "C:\\Users\\pnfst\\selenium-server-4.35.0.jar" hub 2>&1 &';
$nodeCommand = 'C:\\Program Files\\Java\\jdk-24\\bin\\java.exe -Dwebdriver.edge.driver=C:\\Users\\pnfst\\msedgedriver.exe -jar "C:\\Users\\pnfst\\selenium-server-4.35.0.jar" node --config "C:\\Users\\pnfst\\NodeWebDriver.json" 2>&1 &';
$hubResult = exec($hubCommand, $hubOutput, $hubResult_code); // start hab
$nodeResult = exec($nodeCommand, $nodeOutput, $nodeResult_code); // start node

Variant 2

$psHubCommand = 'Start-Process -FilePath "C:\\Program Files\\Java\\jdk-24\\bin\\java.exe" -ArgumentList "-jar", "selenium-server-4.35.0.jar", "hub" -WorkingDirectory "C:\\Users\\pnfst" -Verb RunAs';
$psNodeCommand = 'Start-Process -FilePath "C:\\Program Files\\Java\\jdk-24\\bin\\java.exe" -ArgumentList "-Dwebdriver.edge.driver=msedgedriver.exe", "-jar", "selenium-server-4.35.0.jar", "node", "--config", ".\\NodeWebDriver.json" -WorkingDirectory "C:\\Users\\pnfst" -Verb RunAs';
$hubCommand = "powershell.exe -NonInteractive -NoProfile -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -Command " . escapeshellarg($psHubCommand) . " 2>&1 &";
$nodeCommand = "powershell.exe -NonInteractive -NoProfile -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -Command " . escapeshellarg($psNodeCommand) . " 2>&1 &";
$hubResult = exec($hubCommand, $hubOutput, $hubResult_code); // start hab
$nodeResult = exec($nodeCommand, $nodeOutput, $nodeResult_code); // start node

Variant 3

$psHubCommand = 'Start-Process -FilePath "C:\\Windows\\system32\\cmd.exe" -ArgumentList "/c", "C:\\Users\\pnfst\\selenium-server-hub.bat" -WorkingDirectory "C:\\Users\\pnfst" -Verb RunAs';
$psNodeCommand = 'Start-Process -FilePath "C:\\Windows\\system32\\cmd.exe" -ArgumentList "/c", "C:\\Users\\pnfst\\selenium-server-node.bat" -WorkingDirectory "C:\\Users\\pnfst" -Verb RunAs';
$hubCommand = "powershell.exe -NonInteractive -NoProfile -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -Command " . escapeshellarg($psHubCommand) . " 2>&1 &";
$nodeCommand = "powershell.exe -NonInteractive -NoProfile -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -Command " . escapeshellarg($psNodeCommand) . " 2>&1 &";
$hubResult = exec($hubCommand, $hubOutput, $hubResult_code); // start hab
$nodeResult = exec($nodeCommand, $nodeOutput, $nodeResult_code); // start node

All variants return result code 0 and don't start hab and node. Variant 2 throws with PowerShell MissingArgument (hub command) and PositionalParameterNotFound (node command) exceptions.
How to properly start a Selenium standalone server from PHP?

Solved

I created subfolders selenium\server in the project publish directory C:\inetpub\wwwroot\medservices\wwwroot and copied all the necessary files there: selenium-server-4.35.0.jar, msedgedriver.exe, NodeWebDriver.json, selenium-server-hub.bat and selenium-server-node.bat. I also made the following changes to the PHP script and bat files.

selenium-server-hub.bat

chcp 65001
chdir C:\inetpub\wwwroot\medservices\wwwroot\selenium\server
"C:\Program Files\Java\jdk-24\bin\java.exe" -jar "selenium-server-4.35.0.jar" hub

selenium-server-node.bat

chcp 65001
chdir C:\inetpub\wwwroot\medservices\wwwroot\selenium\server
"C:\Program Files\Java\jdk-24\bin\java.exe" -Dwebdriver.edge.driver=msedgedriver.exe -jar "selenium-server-4.35.0.jar" node --config "NodeWebDriver.json"

PHP script, which start Selenium server

<?php
function CheckIfSeleniumServerStarted(string $role) : bool
{
 $isStarted = false;
 $handle = curl_init();
 if($handle instanceof CurlHandle)
 {
 curl_setopt_array($handle,
 [
 CURLOPT_URL => $role === "node" ? "http://localhost:5555" : "http://localhost:4444",
 CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER => [ "Connection: keep-alive", "Accept: */*" ],
 CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER => true,
 CURLOPT_CONNECTTIMEOUT => 60,
 CURLOPT_TIMEOUT => 60,
 CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION => true,
 CURLOPT_USERAGENT => $_SERVER["HTTP_USER_AGENT"],
 CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYHOST => FALSE,
 CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYPEER => FALSE
 ]);
 $result = curl_exec($handle);
 $isStarted = is_string($result) && ($statusCode = curl_getinfo($handle, CURLINFO_HTTP_CODE)) >= 200 && $statusCode < 300;
 curl_close($handle);
 }
 return $isStarted;
}
ini_set("display_errors", true);
header('Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8');
$cmdPath = "C:\\Windows\\system32\\cmd.exe";
$workingDir = __DIR__ . "\\selenium\\server";
$shell = null;
if(!CheckIfSeleniumServerStarted("hub"))
{
 $command = "{$cmdPath} /C {$workingDir}\\selenium-server-hub.bat 2>&1 &";
 $shell = new COM("WScript.Shell");
 $shell->Run($command, 1, false);
 sleep(1);
}
else
{
 echo "<pre>Selenium server hub is already started.</pre>";
}
if(!CheckIfSeleniumServerStarted("node"))
{
 $command = "{$cmdPath} /C {$workingDir}\\selenium-server-node.bat 2>&1 &";
 $shell = $shell ?? new COM("WScript.Shell");
 $shell->Run($command, 1, false);
 sleep(1);
}
else
{
 echo "<pre>Selenium server node is already started.</pre>";
}
?>

• hakre: the batch files have no error handling.
• Ken Lee: Suggestion: change all the relative paths to absolute paths and try again (e.g. .\selenium-server-4.35.0.jar change it to c:\xxxx\xxxx\selenium-server-4.35.0.jar)
• emilianoc: ok php code , please add more info about how do you run php script powershell? scheduled task? click on a webserver?