Selenium running headless Firefox browser in Windows

Question

Is it possible to configure Selenium to use Firefox driver and run the browser headlessly within Windows?

I am aware of other drivers working so within Windows or under Linux but not in the particular case mentioned above. Any reference information (ad-hoc ways to achieve it, limitations, etc.) to read upon is highly appreaciated.

Regards,

Whitelivered

Answer 1

It is possible to run browsers (Firefox, IE, ...) via dedicated virtual desktop which supported by OS Windows. One such known helper utility for that task is Headless Selenium for Windows.

Bales

Answer 2

Here is the way we are running selenium using firefox driver in headless mode on windows.

Create a windows task schedule, you can either do this using the UI http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows/schedule-task#1TC=windows-7

or with a command like this :

schtasks /Create /TN Automation /TR C:\automation\automated_regression.bat /SC ONSTART /RU Administrator /RP password /F /V1

in our case, the automation is ant driven, so the automated_regression.bat has something like this

:myLoop
cd c:\automation
call ant_env.bat
call ant -f regression.xml
GOTO myLoop

where the regression.xml has a the typical junit targets of a selenium java project

    <property name="main.dir" location="./selweb" />
    <property name="src.dir" location="${main.dir}/src" />
    <property name="lib.dir" location="${main.dir}/lib" />
    <property name="build.dir" location="${main.dir}/build" />
    <property name="test.report" location="${main.dir}/testreport">
    </property>
    
    <path id="build.classpath">
        <fileset dir="${lib.dir}">
            <include name="**/*.jar" />
        </fileset>
    </path>
    
    <target name="clean">
        <delete dir="${build.dir}" />
        <delete dir="${test.report}" />
    </target>
    
    <target name="make dir" depends="clean">
        <mkdir dir="${build.dir}" />
        <mkdir dir="${test.report}" />
    </target>
    
    <target name="compile" depends="clean, make dir">
        <javac srcdir="${src.dir}" destdir="${build.dir}" debug="true">
            <classpath refid="build.classpath" />
        </javac>
    </target>
    
    <target name="junit" depends="clean, make dir,compile">
        <loadfile property="LATEST" srcFile="LATEST" />
        <junit printsummary="no" fork="true" haltonfailure="false" dir="${main.dir}">
            <classpath>
                <pathelement path="${build.dir}" />
                <fileset dir="${lib.dir}">
                    <include name="**/*.jar" />
                </fileset>
            </classpath>
            <formatter type="xml" />
            <batchtest todir="${test.report}">
                <fileset dir="${build.dir}">
                    <include name="**/tests/**/*.class" />
                </fileset>
            </batchtest>
        </junit>
        
        <junitreport todir="${test.report}">
            <fileset dir="${test.report}">
                <include name="**/*.xml"/>
            </fileset>
            <report format="noframes" todir="${test.report}/html" styledir="${main.dir}/style"> 
            <param name="TITLE" expression="Selenium Test Results for build ${LATEST}"/>
            </report>
            <report format="frames" todir="${test.report}/html" styledir="${main.dir}/style"/>
        </junitreport>      
    </target>

you can use a logger to record your ant runtime eg.

<record name="log\automation_${timestamp}.log" loglevel="verbose" append="false" />

using this you can follow what is going on in your headless automation.

The ' characters around the executable and arguments are
not part of the command.
    [junit] Test com.yourtests ... FAILED
    [junit] Implicitly adding C:\automation\dep\apache-ant-1.8.4\lib\ant-launcher.jar;C:\automation\dep\apache-ant-1.8.4\lib\ant.jar;C:\automation\dep\apache-ant-1.8.4\lib\ant-junit.jar;C:\automation\dep\apache-ant-1.8.4\lib\ant-junit4.jar to CLASSPATH
.....    
'org.apache.tools.ant.taskdefs.optional.junit.JUnitTestRunner'
'com.yourtests'
'filtertrace=true'
'haltOnError=false'
'haltOnFailure=false'
'showoutput=false'
'outputtoformatters=true'
'logfailedtests=true'
'logtestlistenerevents=false'
'formatter=org.apache.tools.ant.taskdefs.optional.junit.XMLJUnitResultFormatter,c:\automation\selweb\testreport\TEST-com.yourtests'
'crashfile=c:\automation\junitvmwatcher2114698975676150832.properties'
'propsfile=c:\automation\junit4190343520192991051.properties'

We have followed this approach and it's working, even screen shots are being taken and inserted in the ant-junit html report.

So the essence is that you need to run your selenium through windows Tasks Scheduler and it will run in headless mode. I think something similar can be done under linux using the cron, but i haven't tried it out to see if it works.

Pforzheim