Is it possible to run selenium (Firefox) web driver without a GUI?
UbuntuSeleniumWebdriverUbuntu Problem Overview
We are considering upgrading our production server from Ubuntu-desktop 10.04 to Ubuntu-server 12.04.
We have various services running on our current desktop OS such as Selenium Web Driver. My question is can the Selenium Web Driver be run from a cli-based system?
My immediate thought is that it can't, because it relies on Firefox, but I'd like for someone to prove me wrong!
Ubuntu Solutions
Solution 1 - Ubuntu
What you're looking for is a [tag:headless-browser].
Yes, it's possible to run Selenium on Firefox headlessly. Here is a [post][1] you can follow.
Here is the summary steps to set up Xvfb
#install Xvfb
sudo apt-get install xvfb
#set display number to :99
Xvfb :99 -ac &
export DISPLAY=:99
#you are now having an X display by Xvfb
[1]: http://www.alittlemadness.com/2008/03/05/running-selenium-headless/ "Running Selenium Headless"
Solution 2 - Ubuntu
Chrome now has a headless mode:
op = webdriver.ChromeOptions()
op.add_argument('--headless')
driver = webdriver.Chrome(options=op)
Solution 3 - Ubuntu
Yes. You can use HTMLUnitDriver instead for FirefoxDriver while starting webdriver. This is headless browser setup. Details can be found here.
Solution 4 - Ubuntu
If you want headless browser support then there is another approach you might adopt.
https://github.com/detro/ghostdriver
It was announced during Selenium Conference and it is still in development. It uses PhantomJS as the browser and is much better than HTMLUnitDriver, there are no screenshots yet, but as it is still in active development.
Solution 5 - Ubuntu
An optional is to use pyvirtualdisplay like this:
from pyvirtualdisplay import Display
display = Display(visible=0, size=[800, 600])
display.start()
#do selenium job here
display.close()
A shorter version is:
with Display() as display:
# selenium job here
This is generally a python encapsulate of xvfb, and more convinient somehow.
By the way, although PhantomJS is a headless browser and no window will be open if you use it, it seems that PhantomJS still needs a gui environment to work.
I got Error Code -6 when I use PhantomJS() instead of Firefox() in headless mode (putty-connected console). However everything is ok in desktop environment.
Solution 6 - Ubuntu
UPDATE: You do not need XVFB to run headless Firefox anymore. Firefox v55+ on Linux and Firefox v56+ on Windows/Mac now supports headless execution.
I added some how-to-use documentation here:
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Firefox/Headless_mode#Selenium_in_Java
Solution 7 - Ubuntu
Another option is GhostDriver which is now officially supported by WebDriver: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/14194371/ghostdriver-actual-performance-gain/14707494#14707494
Solution 8 - Ubuntu
Install & run containerized Firefox:
docker pull selenium/standalone-firefox
docker run --rm -d -p 4444:4444 --shm-size=2g selenium/standalone-firefox
Connect using webdriver.Remote:
driver = webdriver.Remote('http://localhost:4444/wd/hub', DesiredCapabilities.FIREFOX)
driver.set_window_size(1280, 1024)
driver.get('https://www.google.com')
Solution 9 - Ubuntu
Be aware that HtmlUnitDriver webclient is single-threaded and Ghostdriver is only at 40% of the functionalities to be a WebDriver.
Nonetheless, Ghostdriver run properly for tests and I have problems to connect it to the WebDriver hub.
Solution 10 - Ubuntu
maybe you need to set your window-size dimension. just like：
options = webdriver.ChromeOptions()
options.add_argument('--headless')
options.add_argument('--disable-gpu')
options.add_argument('--window-size=1920x1080');
browser = webdriver.Chrome(options=options,executable_path = './chromedriver')
if also not working, try increase window-size dimension.
Solution 11 - Ubuntu
Yes, you can run test scripts without a browser, But you should run them in headless mode.