Headless Browser Testing – Selenium WebDriver

Headless browser testing is simply testing a web pages functionality, without a GUI present. There are various different browsers we could use for this, including:

• Chrome
• Firefox
• PhantomJS
• HtmlUnit

PhantomJS is the only driver that must be downloaded separately, the other three, come bundled in with their corresponding driver servers, or with Selenium as a whole.

Chrome Headless Browser

To test against Chromes built-in headless browser, we can use:

package headlesstests;

import java.util.concurrent.TimeUnit;

import org.junit.After;
import org.junit.Before;
import org.junit.Test;
import org.openqa.selenium.By;
import org.openqa.selenium.WebDriver;
import org.openqa.selenium.chrome.ChromeDriver;
import org.openqa.selenium.chrome.ChromeOptions;

public class ChromeHeadless {

	WebDriver driver;

	@Before
	public void setUp() throws Exception {
                //Instantiating ChromeOptions object
		ChromeOptions options = new ChromeOptions();
                //Adding "headless" argument to options
		options.addArguments("headless");
                //Passing the options into the ChromeDriver
		driver = new ChromeDriver(options);

		driver.get("https://www.edgewordstraining.co.uk/webdriver2/");
		driver.manage().timeouts().implicitlyWait(10, TimeUnit.SECONDS);
	}

	@After
	public void tearDown() throws Exception {
		driver.quit();
	}

	@Test
	public void test() {
		System.out.println("Title of the page is -> " + driver.getTitle());
		driver.findElement(By.partialLinkText("Login")).click();
		driver.findElement(By.id("username")).click();
		driver.findElement(By.id("password")).click();
		driver.findElement(By.partialLinkText("Sub")).click();
	}
}

Firefox Headless Browser

To test against Firefox’x built-in headless browser, we can use:

package headlesstests;

import java.util.concurrent.TimeUnit;

import org.junit.After;
import org.junit.Before;
import org.junit.Test;
import org.openqa.selenium.By;
import org.openqa.selenium.WebDriver;
import org.openqa.selenium.firefox.FirefoxDriver;
import org.openqa.selenium.firefox.FirefoxOptions;

public class FirefoxHeadless {

	WebDriver driver;

	@Before
	public void setUp() throws Exception {
                //Instantiating FirefoxOptions object
		FirefoxOptions options = new FirefoxOptions();
                //Adding "--headless" argument to options
		options.addArguments("--headless");
                //Passing the options into the FirefoxDriver
		driver = new FirefoxDriver(options);

		driver.get("https://www.edgewordstraining.co.uk/webdriver2/");
		driver.manage().timeouts().implicitlyWait(10, TimeUnit.SECONDS);
	}

	@After
	public void tearDown() throws Exception {
		driver.quit();
	}

	@Test
	public void test() {
		System.out.println("Title of the page is -> " + driver.getTitle());
		driver.findElement(By.partialLinkText("Login")).click();
		driver.findElement(By.id("username")).click();
		driver.findElement(By.id("password")).click();
		driver.findElement(By.partialLinkText("Sub")).click();
	}

}

PhantomJS Headless Browser

To test against PhantomJS headless browser, does require the PhantomJS driver, which can be downloaded from: http://phantomjs.org/

You can then use:

package headlesstests;

import java.util.concurrent.TimeUnit;

import org.junit.After;
import org.junit.Before;
import org.junit.Test;
import org.openqa.selenium.By;
import org.openqa.selenium.WebDriver;
import org.openqa.selenium.phantomjs.PhantomJSDriver;

public class PhantomJSHeadless {

	WebDriver driver;

	@Before
	public void setUp() throws Exception {
		//Instantiate PhantomJSDriver
		driver = new PhantomJSDriver();

		driver.get("https://www.edgewordstraining.co.uk/webdriver2/");
		driver.manage().timeouts().implicitlyWait(10, TimeUnit.SECONDS);
	}

	@After
	public void tearDown() throws Exception {
		driver.quit();
	}

	@Test
	public void test() {
		System.out.println("Title of the page is -> " + driver.getTitle());
		driver.findElement(By.partialLinkText("Login")).click();
		driver.findElement(By.id("username")).click();
		driver.findElement(By.id("password")).click();
		driver.findElement(By.partialLinkText("Sub")).click();
	}
}

HtmlUnit Headless Browser

To test against Selenium’s built-in headless browser, we can use:

package headlesstests;

import java.util.concurrent.TimeUnit;

import org.junit.After;
import org.junit.Before;
import org.junit.Test;
import org.openqa.selenium.By;
import org.openqa.selenium.htmlunit.HtmlUnitDriver;

public class HtmlUnitHeadless {

	HtmlUnitDriver driver = new HtmlUnitDriver(true);

	@Before
	public void setUp() throws Exception {
		driver.get("https://www.edgewordstraining.co.uk/webdriver2/");
		driver.manage().timeouts().implicitlyWait(10, TimeUnit.SECONDS);
	}

	@After
	public void tearDown() throws Exception {
		driver.quit();
	}

	@Test
	public void test() {
		System.out.println("Title of the page is -> " + driver.getTitle());
		driver.findElement(By.partialLinkText("Login")).click();
		driver.findElement(By.id("username")).click();
		driver.findElement(By.id("password")).click();
		driver.findElement(By.partialLinkText("Sub")).click();
	}
}

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