Selenium WebDriver tips

Since the beginning of my current automation project we've been encountering issues that seemed to be real showstoppers. These issues were not only time-consuming but could also stop the whole idea of automated checks. Fortunately thanks to the Selenium WebDriver community we were able to handle every problem challenge. Here are some tips that were useful in our context:

1. HTTP Basic Authentication with Selenium WebDriver
Our automated checks needed to be run against web server with HTTP Basic Authentication.

Firefox Authentication Window


IE Authentication Window


Basically the authentication prompt is not available from the Selenium WebDriver. One of the way to handle this limitation is to pass user and password in the url like like below:

http://user:password@example.com

Before we can pass username and password in the url we need to make sure that given web browser let us use this feature.

Firefox
You need to change the following flag:

browser.safebrowsing.malware.enabled

You can change the state of this flag in the default Firefox profile using about:config service page (double click on the flag to change it's state) From now on the Firefox should let you go through http authentication using name and password in the url. (Note that if you are using Selenium WebDriver 2.6 or higher this flag should be disabled by default)

Internet Explorer
Because of the security reason IE by default has this feature disabled. To overcome this limitation you need to update a windows registry as described in this article : http://support.microsoft.com/kb/834489
You need to go to regedit and look for the key

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main\FeatureControl\FEATURE_HTTP_USERNAME_PASSWORD_DISABLE

Then you need to add a DWORD 'iexplorer.exe' with '0' value in this key:


This functionality should be available immediately after restarting IE browser

In case your authentication server requires username with domain like "domain\user" you need to remember about adding double slash “\\” (or "%5C" symbol in case of IE) to the url you use in Navigate().GoToUrl() function

http://localdomain\\user:password@example.com
http://domain%5Cuser:password@example.com

2. Same Protected Mode across all zones on IE 8
To be able to run WebDriver on IE you need to equalize the Protected Mode settings for all zones in IE8. It's easy when you are in charge of your computer security policy, however it might be difficult when your machine works under global company policy. In that case you may be not able to change this settings even with local administrator rights.



One of the way we found useful is to update these settings through the windows register in following register keys:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Internet Settings\Zones
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Internet Settings\Zones

and equalize values for 0x2500 position in all zones.


Value: 3 (Protected Mode off)
Value: 0 (Protected Mode on)

[UPDATE 1]
It seems there is another way to overcome this IE limitation, however we haven't tried it yet - http://www.qaautomation.net/?p=373

[UPDATE 2]
Above tips were tested on : WebDriver 2.6, Windows 7, Firefox 7, IE8

[UPDATE 3]
Thanks to Damian Galek:

Another way of bypassing Selenium limitation, regarding not being able to reach Windows Authentication prompt, that actually worked for us, could be using SendKeys class (one of the class in System.Windows.Forms.dll library – link). It can be used to type whatever we need into any Windows-based application. So in our solution something similar to thefollowing code was used to enter any desired users credentials and accept authentication prompt:

Driver.SwitchTo().Alert(); #Web driver functionSystem.Windows.Forms.SendKeys.SendWait("Down}");System.Windows.Forms.SendKeys.SendWait("Down}");System.Windows.Forms.SendKeys.SendWait(username);System.Windows.Forms.SendKeys.SendWait("TAB}");System.Windows.Forms.SendKeys.SendWait(password);System.Windows.Forms.SendKeys.SendWait("{Enter}");Driver.SwitchTo().DefaultContent(); #Web driver function

This may not be the cleanest solution out there but it works.

Alek