How to set up a WebDriver

Within the file config/browser.properties you can setup the browsers used throughout testing.

Set up a specific WebDriver

For that, you have to download and provide a specific Selenium WebDriver.

You can download the common ones here:

• ChromeDriver
• GeckoDriver (Firefox)
• InternetExplorerDriver

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

Setup a specific browser

Sometimes the browser of your choice is not configured in your system path and the WebDriver is not able to find it. Or you would like to test a certain browser e.g. a developer edition or an extended service release. You need to configure the path to the browser in the config/neodymium.properties file.

e.g. neodymium.webDriver.firefox.pathToBrowser = C:/Program Files (x86)/Mozilla Firefox/firefox.exe

More documentation on the settings within the config/neodymium.properties can be found on the Neodymium configuration properties page.

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

Teardown

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

Those settings are configured via 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.

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 is 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.

Teardown 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. 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.

  @AfterAll
  public void afterClass()
  {
    WebDriverUtils.quitReusableCachedBrowsers();
  }

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