Selenium server configuration

When the server is launched, command line options can be used to change the default server behaviour.

Recall, the server is started by running the following.

$ java -jar selenium-server-standalone-<version-number>.jar

To see the list of options, run the server with the -h option.

$ java -jar selenium-server-standalone-<version-number>.jar -h

You’ll see a list of all the options you can use with the server and a brief description of each. The provided descriptions will not always be enough, so we’ve provided explanations for some of the more important options.

Proxy Configuration

If your AUT is behind an HTTP proxy which requires authentication then you should configure http.proxyHost, http.proxyPort, http.proxyUser and http.proxyPassword using the following command.

$ java -jar selenium-server-standalone-<version-number>.jar -Dhttp.proxyHost=proxy.com -Dhttp.proxyPort=8080 -Dhttp.proxyUser=username -Dhttp.proxyPassword=password

Multi-Window Mode

If you are using Selenium 1.0 you can probably skip this section, since multiwindow mode is the default behavior. However, prior to version 1.0, Selenium by default ran the application under test in a sub frame as shown here.

Some applications didn’t run correctly in a sub frame, and needed to be loaded into the top frame of the window. The multi-window mode option allowed the AUT to run in a separate window rather than in the default frame where it could then have the top frame it required.

For older versions of Selenium you must specify multiwindow mode explicitly with the following option:

-multiwindow

As of Selenium RC 1.0, if you want to run your test within a single frame (i.e. using the standard for earlier Selenium versions) you can state this to the Selenium Server using the option

-singlewindow

Specifying the Firefox Profile

Firefox will not run two instances simultaneously unless you specify a separate profile for each instance. Selenium RC 1.0 and later runs in a separate profile automatically, so if you are using Selenium 1.0, you can probably skip this section. However, if you’re using an older version of Selenium or if you need to use a specific profile for your tests (such as adding an https certificate or having some addons installed), you will need to explicitly specify the profile.

First, to create a separate Firefox profile, follow this procedure. Open the Windows Start menu, select “Run”, then type and enter one of the following:

firefox.exe -profilemanager

firefox.exe -P

Create the new profile using the dialog. Then when you run Selenium Server, tell it to use this new Firefox profile with the server command-line option -firefoxProfileTemplate and specify the path to the profile using its filename and directory path.

-firefoxProfileTemplate "path to the profile"

Warning

Be sure to put your profile in a new folder separate from the default!!! The Firefox profile manager tool will delete all files in a folder if you delete a profile, regardless of whether they are profile files or not.

More information about Firefox profiles can be found in Mozilla’s Knowledge Base

Run Selenese Directly Within the Server Using -htmlSuite

You can run Selenese html files directly within the Selenium Server by passing the html file to the server’s command line. For instance:

java -jar selenium-server-standalone-<version-number>.jar -htmlSuite "*firefox"

"http://www.google.com" "c:\absolute\path\to\my\HTMLSuite.html"

"c:\absolute\path\to\my\results.html"

This will automatically launch your HTML suite, run all the tests and save a nice HTML report with the results.

Note

When using this option, the server will start the tests and wait for a specified number of seconds for the test to complete; if the test doesn’t complete within that amount of time, the command will exit with a non-zero exit code and no results file will be generated.

This command line is very long so be careful when you type it. Note this requires you to pass in an HTML Selenese suite, not a single test. Also be aware the -htmlSuite option is incompatible with -interactive You cannot run both at the same time.

Selenium Server Logging

Server-Side Logs

When launching selenium server the -log option can be used to record valuable debugging information reported by the Selenium Server to a text file.

java -jar selenium-server-standalone-<version-number>.jar -log selenium.log

This log file is more verbose than the standard console logs (it includes DEBUG level logging messages). The log file also includes the logger name, and the ID number of the thread that logged the message. For example:

20:44:25 DEBUG [12] org.openqa.selenium.server.SeleniumDriverResourceHandler -

Browser 465828/:top frame1 posted START NEW

The message format is

TIMESTAMP(HH:mm:ss) LEVEL [THREAD] LOGGER - MESSAGE

This message may be multiline.

Browser-Side Logs

JavaScript on the browser side (Selenium Core) also logs important messages; in many cases, these can be more useful to the end-user than the regular Selenium Server logs. To access browser-side logs, pass the -browserSideLog argument to the Selenium Server.

java -jar selenium-server-standalone-<version-number>.jar -browserSideLog

-browserSideLog must be combined with the -log argument, to log browserSideLogs (as well as all other DEBUG level logging messages) to a file.

Specifying the Path to a Specific Browser

You can specify to Selenium RC a path to a specific browser. This is useful if you have different versions of the same browser and you wish to use a specific one. Also, this is used to allow your tests to run against a browser not directly supported by Selenium RC. When specifying the run mode, use the *custom specifier followed by the full path to the browser’s executable:

*custom <path to browser>