selenium-standalone

What is selenium-standalone?

The selenium-standalone npm package is a tool that allows you to easily install and run a standalone Selenium server. This is useful for running automated tests in various browsers without needing to manually set up the Selenium server and browser drivers.

What are selenium-standalone's main functionalities?

Install Selenium Server and Browser Drivers

This feature allows you to install the Selenium server and browser drivers (e.g., ChromeDriver, GeckoDriver) with a single command. The code sample demonstrates how to install the latest versions of the Selenium server and drivers for Chrome and Firefox.

const selenium = require('selenium-standalone');

selenium.install({
  version: 'latest',
  baseURL: 'https://selenium-release.storage.googleapis.com',
  drivers: {
    chrome: { version: 'latest' },
    firefox: { version: 'latest' }
  },
  logger: function(message) {
    console.log(message);
  }
}, function(err) {
  if (err) { return console.error(err); }
  console.log('Selenium and drivers installed successfully');
});

Start Selenium Server

This feature allows you to start the Selenium server programmatically. The code sample demonstrates how to start the Selenium server and log a message upon successful startup.

const selenium = require('selenium-standalone');

selenium.start(function(err, child) {
  if (err) { return console.error(err); }
  console.log('Selenium server started successfully');
  // child is a ChildProcess instance
});

Stop Selenium Server

This feature allows you to stop the Selenium server programmatically. The code sample demonstrates how to start the Selenium server and then stop it after 10 seconds.

const selenium = require('selenium-standalone');

selenium.start(function(err, child) {
  if (err) { return console.error(err); }
  console.log('Selenium server started successfully');
  // Stop the server after 10 seconds
  setTimeout(() => {
    child.kill();
    console.log('Selenium server stopped');
  }, 10000);
});

Other packages similar to selenium-standalone

webdriver-manager

webdriver-manager is a tool for managing WebDriver binaries. It can download, update, and start WebDriver binaries for different browsers. Unlike selenium-standalone, which focuses on running a standalone Selenium server, webdriver-manager is more focused on managing the WebDriver binaries themselves.

selenium-webdriver

selenium-webdriver is the official Selenium package for Node.js. It provides bindings for the WebDriver API and allows you to write automated tests for web applications. While selenium-standalone focuses on setting up and running the Selenium server, selenium-webdriver is used for writing and executing the tests themselves.

nightwatch

Nightwatch is an end-to-end testing framework that uses the WebDriver API. It provides a higher-level API for writing tests and includes built-in support for running tests with Selenium. Nightwatch can manage the Selenium server and browser drivers, similar to selenium-standalone, but it also includes additional features for writing and organizing tests.

README

selenium-standalone

Command line or programmatic install and launch of latest selenium standalone server, chrome driver and internet explorer driver.

It will install a start-selenium command line that will be able to launch firefox, chrome, internet explorer or phantomjs for your tests.

Currently installs selenium 2.44.0, chrome driver 2.12 and internet explorer driver 2.44.0.

npm install selenium-standalone@latest -g
start-selenium

Any arguments passed to start-selenium are then passed to java -jar ...jar args.

So you can start-selenium -debug to launch standalone selenium server in debug mode.

Running headlessly

On linux,

To run headlessly, you can use xvfb:

xvfb-run --server-args="-screen 0, 1366x768x24" start-selenium

Available browsers

By default, google chrome, firefox and phantomjs are available if installed on the sytem.

Example: launch www.google.com

Using a selenium driver like wd:

npm install wd -g
wd shell
(wd): browser = wd.remote(); browser.init(function(){browser.get('http://www.google.com')})

Programmatic use

var selenium = require('selenium-standalone');

var spawnOptions = { stdio: 'pipe' };

// options to pass to `java -jar selenium-server-standalone-X.XX.X.jar`
var seleniumArgs = [
  '-debug'
];

var server = selenium(spawnOptions, seleniumArgs);
// or, var server = selenium();
// returns ChildProcess instance
// http://nodejs.org/api/child_process.html#child_process_class_childprocess

// spawnOptions defaults to `{ stdio: 'inherit' }`
// seleniumArgs defaults to `[]`

server.stdout.on('data', function(output) {
  console.log(output);
});

IEDriverServer architecture

IEDriverServer 32/64bit version is downloaded according to processor architecture. There are known issues with sendkeys being slow on 64bit version of Internet Explorer. To address this issue, IEDriverServer architecture can be configured using IEDRIVER_ARCH environment variable. Supported values are ia32 and x64.

Example: Force 32bit IEDriverServer to be used

set IEDRIVER_ARCH=ia32
npm install selenium-standalone@latest -g
start-selenium

selenium-standalone versions maps selenium versions.