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Selenium Grid : Running tests in Parallel

Selenium Grid is used for running Selenium test cases in parallel across many browsers and platforms and this help us to execute test suite(s) faster and reduce the test execution time. It helps to reduce the test execution time further and add more value to test automation. Selenium Grid has two versions.

We will discuss about the latest version, Grid 2.

In this blog post we will discuss running Selenium test cases across multiple browsers. We will start with the prerequisites required, downloading the grid, starting hub and node. Configuring Selenium Web Driver tests and TestNG are discussed in following section. Advanced usage of Selenium and troubleshooting are discussed at the end of the blog post.

Selenium grid hub

Pre-requisites

We assume following JDK 1.7 or later it is installed.
All required web browsers are installed on target machines (remote and local) Selenium Web Driver + Java + TestNG test cases are available.Testng.xml file is configured to run the test suite successfully Understand use of external drivers to run tests against IE, Google Chrome etc and have the external drivers.

Downloading Selenium Grid

Selenium Grid and selenium remote control server are bundled together in Grid 2.
Download the latest version of selenium server ( .jar file)
http://selenium-release.storage.googleapis.com/index.html

selenium jar file

Save the .jar file into your project folder. We use this folder as {GRID_HOME}

Ensure the version number match with the Web Driver version used in pom.xml

Starting Hub

Open a command prompt
Navigate to the {GRID_HOME}
Type following in the command prompt and hit enter key to start the hub.

java -jar selenium-server-standalone-2.53.1.jar -role hub

Change the version number to match your selenium server version

4.Wait till hub is started. Following will appear in the console when the hub is started successfully

Verify Hub

Open a web browser and navigate to http://localhost:4444/grid/console to view the status of the hub.

view config

Starting Nodes

Now you can start the nodes.

Open a command prompt
Navigate to {GRID_HOME}
Type following into the command prompt and hit enter key

java -jar selenium-server-standalone-2.53.1.jar -role node -hub http://localhost:444/grid/register

local host should be changed with IP address if your hub is running on a remote machine.

Default port number associated with node is 5555. If you wish to run multiple nodes on a same machine you will have to run nodes on a unique port. Use -port XYXM parameter to set the port.

Example :

java -jar selenium-server-standalone-2.53.1.jar -role node -hub http://localhost:4444/grid/register -port 6666

4. Wait till node is started and registered with the hub. Following will appear in your console.

Selenium server version of the hub and node should be same

Shutdown Node and Hub

Focus to the console of Node or Hub. Press Ctrl +Enter to shutdown hub/node.

Do not close the console(s) to shutdown the service.

Verify node registration with hub

Open a web browser and navigate to http://localhost:4444/grid/console to view the status of the hub. You will see the newly registered node(s) with the hub listed in the web console.

grid console

By default a node will allow for concurrent use of 11 browsers for WebDriver. Five Firefox, Five Google Chrome and One IE.

Please refer to Advanced section to configure the nodes by command line.

Configuring Selenium Tests

Configuring Selenium WebDriver

You will have to use RemoteWebDriver instead of FirefoxDriver, InternetExplorerDriver, ChromeDriver etc. The DesiredCapabilities object will be used to set the desired browser name, browser version , platform etc. Basically, the DesiredCapabilities help to set properties for the WebDriver.

Create target browser capabilities

DesiredCapabilities capability = DesiredCapabilities.firefox();

2. Pass the DesiredCapabilities object into the RemoteWebDriver

WebDriver driver = new RemoteWebDriver(new URL(“http://localhost:4444/wd/hub”), capability);

localhost should be changed with IP address if your hub is running on a remote machine

Hub will select the nodes based on the requested capabilities. We will have to set the capabilities to match desired browser type, browser version, platform etc.

Example :

capability.setBrowserName(“firefox” );
capability.setPlatform(“WINDOWS”);
capability.setVersion(“3.6”);

The name of the browser should be one of {android|chrome|firefox|htmlunit|internet explorer|iPhone|iPad|opera|safari}.

Platform the browser should be one of {WINDOWS|XP|VISTA|MAC|LINUX|UNIX|ANDROID}

Configuring TestNG

Open your Selenium Project in IDEA.
Open testng.xml file which was configured to run the test suite.
Add following parameters to run the tests, classes etc in parallel.

Select parameter option tests to run the tests in parallel. Select classes to run test classes in parallel. You may choose classes if you wish. Set it to false when you don’t want to run the tests in parallel.

Running the Test Cases

You can execute the test suite by running the testng.xml file. Test cases will be executed in parallel in multiple browsers.

Advanced

You can try following options when you are comfortable with basic usage of Selenium Grid.

Start a node for Internet Explorer

java -jar selenium-server-standalone-2.53.1.jar -role node -hub http://localhost:4444/grid/register -port 6666 -Dwebdriver.ie.driver=”FULLPATH_TO_IE_DRIVER”

Start a node for Google Chrome

java -jar selenium-server-standalone-2.53.1.jar -role node -hub http://localhost:4444/grid/register -port 6666 -Dwebdriver.chrome.driver=”FULLPATH_TO_CHROME_DRIVER”