WebDriver Handling
To run browser tests a WebDriver for the desired browser is necessary. If the driver is missing, Selenium will automatically download the latest one.
Within the file config/browser.properties you can set up the browsers used throughout testing.
More details on configuring the browser properties can be found in the
browser handling chapter.
The next three sections describe how to set up specific WebDriver and browsers.
Set Up a Specific WebDriver
For that, you have to download and provide a specific Selenium WebDriver.
You can download the common WebDriver here:
After downloading you can configure them in the config/neodymium.properties file. Find the line that matches the
WebDriver of your choice e.g. neodymium.webDriver.chrome.pathToDriverServer = C:/dev/webdriver/chromedriver.exe or
add them to the PATH of your system.
If you need to set the path of the browser executable as well, you can also easily set it in the properties as described here.
Safari WebDriver Setup
Please follow the required steps from Testing with WebDriver in Safari out of the Apple developer documentation to enable Safari on your Mac.
Once the Safari WebDriver is available you just need to configure a browser profile within the
config\browser.properties file. This could look like the following profile.
browserprofile.Safari_1024x768.name=Local Safari 1024x768
browserprofile.Safari_1024x768.browser=safari
browserprofile.Safari_1024x768.screenResolution=1024x768
Tear Down
Normally Neodymium takes care of quitting the WebDriver instances and there is nothing else to do or to worry about. Nevertheless, there may be some use and edge cases you need to handle yourself or know what you can do.
KeepBrowserOpen and KeepBrowserOpenOnFailure
Usually the browser and the according webdriver are closed automatically once a test finishes. However, there are ways to prevent this.
To keep the browser open you can either:
- set the configuration values
neodymium.webDriver.keepBrowserOpen=trueorneodymium.webDriver.keepBrowserOpenOnFailure=trueor - use the annotation
@KeepBrowserOpen(onlyOnFailure = false)
More details about properties can be found in the Neodymium configuration properties. We recommend that you only activate these properties for local test development to avoid resource issues within your CI environment.
If those options are activated, the WebDrivers that opened the browsers can’t be terminated since this would also result in closing the browsers that should stay open. Unfortunately, after you inspected the open browsers and closed them, the WebDrivers then stay open. Therefore, you need to quit those processes manually via some kind of task manager or interface provided by your operating system. If you restart your system regularly you can probably ignore this, since those WebDriver zombie processes will be closed during the normal shutdown routine.
Attention: use the KeepBrowserOpen logic with care. The WebDriver won’t be shut down by
closing the browser and need to be closed manually via some kind of task manager or interface provided by your operating
system.
Reuse of WebDrivers
Another edge case can be the reuse of WebDrivers. The start routine of a browser can take some time especially if they are started in a remote test environment. Therefore, it might a good idea to reuse an already instantiated WebDriver. This setting can be configured via the Neodymium configuration properties.
Nevertheless, you may want to quit specific WebDrivers for some reason, e.g. prevent side effects from some browser state that is not easy to clear or free up resources within the test environment.
In such cases we provide three ways how such a behaviour can be achieved.
Tear Down a Specific WebDriver to Prevent Its Reuse
This function can be used in a @After annotated function within a JUnit test case. You can define a specific condition
that decides whether a WebDriver should be closed or not.
@AfterEach
public void after()
{
if (someConditionIsFulfilled)
{
WebDriverUtils.preventReuseAndTearDown();
}
}
Clear the Cache of a WebDriver Available for Reuse
This function can be used within a function of a JUnit test case that is annotated with @AfterClass to clear the
WebDriverCache of the WebDrivers ready for reuse. When no matching WebDriver can be found in the cache, a new one will
be generated.
@AfterAll
public void afterClass()
{
WebDriverUtils.quitReusableCachedBrowsers();
}
Attention: It is safe to run this function during a sequential test execution. It can however have repercussions (e.g. longer test duration) in a parallel execution environment.
Configuring the Max Reuse Setting
The following two settings need to be configured within the Neodymium configuration e.g. config/neodymium.properties.
Activate the reuse in general and configure the number of reuses. If not specified or set below 1 the driver will be
reused unlimited times. Setting the property to 1 means that the driver is reused once, so the web driver is used twice
in total.
neodymium.webDriver.reuseDriver=true
neodymium.webDriver.maxReuse=1