Headless Execution of WebDriver Tests- Firefox Browser
Headless Execution of WebDriver Tests- Firefox Browser
Learn how to speed up your tests' execution with the Headless Execution mode of Mozilla Firefox and compare its speed to other browsers.
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In the WebDriver Series, you can read lots of advanced tips and tricks about automated testing with WebDriver. In today's publication, I am going to share with you how to speed up your tests' execution through the usage of the newest Headless Execution mode of Mozilla Firefox. Moreover, I made a couple of benchmarks to compare its speed to the rest of the major browsers.
Test Case
I have created a particular HTML page that we are going to use in our tests. There I have put 100 of each of six different HTML elements- text, select, submit, color, data, and radio. Below you can find the page without the repetition of the elements.
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head>
<meta charset="utf-8" />
<title></title>
</head>
<body>
<input type="text" name="fname"><br>
<select>
<option value="volvo">Volvo</option>
<option value="saab">Saab</option>
<option value="mercedes">Mercedes</option>
<option value="audi">Audi</option>
</select><br>
<input type="submit" value="Submit"><br>
<input type="color" value="#ff0000"><br>
<input type="date" value="2017-06-01" min="1980-04-01" max="2099-04-30"><br>
<input type="radio" name="gender" value="male"> Male<br>
</body>
</html>
You can find the full test page on the following URL.
Headless Execution Firefox Driver
It is quite simple to run your tests in the headless mode. You need simply to add the "--headless" argument to the FirefoxOptions object.
var options = new FirefoxOptions();
options.AddArguments("--headless");
using (IWebDriver driver = new FirefoxDriver(options))
{
// the rest of your test
}* However, the current official version of Mozilla Firefox is 56. You need to install the beta 57 version in order to be able to run your tests in headless mode.
Benchmark Against Other Browsers
Test Case
private void PerformTestOperations(IWebDriver driver) {
string testPagePath =
"http://htmlpreview.github.io/?https://github.com/angelovstanton/AutomateThePlanet/blob/master/WebDriver-Series/TestPage.html";
driver.Navigate().GoToUrl(testPagePath);
driver.Manage().Timeouts().PageLoad = TimeSpan.FromSeconds(10);
driver.Manage().Timeouts().ImplicitWait = TimeSpan.FromSeconds(10);
var textBoxes = driver.FindElements(By.Name("fname"));
foreach(var textBox in textBoxes) {
textBox.SendKeys(Guid.NewGuid().ToString());
}
var selects = driver.FindElements(By.TagName("select"));
foreach(var select in selects) {
var selectElement = new SelectElement(select);
selectElement.SelectByText("Mercedes");
}
var submits = driver.FindElements(By.XPath("//input[@type='submit']"));
foreach(var submit in submits) {
submit.Click();
}
var colors = driver.FindElements(By.XPath("//input[@type='color']"));
foreach(var color in colors) {
SetValueAttribute(driver, color, "#000000");
}
var dates = driver.FindElements(By.XPath("//input[@type='date']"));
foreach(var date in dates) {
SetValueAttribute(driver, date, "2020-06-01");
}
var radioButtons = driver.FindElements(By.XPath("//input[@type='radio']"));
foreach(var radio in radioButtons) {
radio.Click();
}
}
private void SetValueAttribute(IWebDriver driver, IWebElement element, string value) {
SetAttribute(driver, element, "value", value);
}
private void SetAttribute(IWebDriver driver, IWebElement element, string attributeName, string attributeValue) {
driver.ExecuteJavaScript(
"arguments[0].setAttribute(arguments[1], arguments[2]);",
element,
attributeName,
attributeValue);
}First, we open the page that I previously showed you- the one with over 600 HTML elements. Then we set some timeouts. We find all elements of each type using different locators. For the HTML 5 elements (date and color) we use a little bit of JavaScript code to set the value of the elements. For the rest of the items, we use the native WebDriver methods.
Benchmark Execution Time
To make proper conclusions about the speed of the different browsers, we will use the method Profile. It will execute the above test a specific number of times (in our case 10 times) and measure the total and average test execution times.
private void Profile(string testResultsFileName, int iterations, Action actionToProfile) {
var desktopPath = Environment.GetFolderPath(Environment.SpecialFolder.Desktop);
var resultsPath = Path.Combine(desktopPath, "BenchmarkTestResults",
string.Concat(testResultsFileName, "_", Guid.NewGuid().ToString(), ".txt"));
var writer = new StreamWriter(resultsPath);
GC.Collect();
GC.WaitForPendingFinalizers();
GC.Collect();
var watch = new Stopwatch();
watch.Start();
for (var i = 0; i < iterations; i++) {
actionToProfile();
}
watch.Stop();
writer.WriteLine("Total: {0:0.00} ms ({1:N0} ticks) (over {2:N0} iterations)",
watch.ElapsedMilliseconds, watch.ElapsedTicks, iterations);
var avgElapsedMillisecondsPerRun = watch.ElapsedMilliseconds / iterations;
var avgElapsedTicksPerRun = watch.ElapsedMilliseconds / iterations;
writer.WriteLine("AVG: {0:0.00} ms ({1:N0} ticks) (over {2:N0} iterations)",
avgElapsedMillisecondsPerRun, avgElapsedTicksPerRun, iterations);
writer.Flush();
writer.Close();
}Benchmark Tests
[Test]
public void TestChromeExecutionTime() {
Profile
(
"TestChromeExecutionTime",
10,
() => {
using(IWebDriver driver = new ChromeDriver()) {
PerformTestOperations(driver);
}
}
);
}
[Test]
public void TestFirefoxExecutionTime() {
Profile
(
"TestFirefoxExecutionTime",
10,
() => {
using(IWebDriver driver = new FirefoxDriver()) {
PerformTestOperations(driver);
}
}
);
}
[Test]
public void TestEdgeExecutionTime() {
Profile
(
"TestEdgeExecutionTime",
10,
() => {
using(IWebDriver driver = new EdgeDriver()) {
PerformTestOperations(driver);
}
}
);
}
[Test]
public void TestPhantomJsExecutionTime() {
Profile
(
"TestPhantomJsExecutionTime",
10,
() => {
using(IWebDriver driver = new PhantomJSDriver()) {
PerformTestOperations(driver);
}
}
);
}
[Test]
public void TestChromeHeadlessExecutionTime() {
Profile
(
"TestChromeHeadlessExecutionTime",
10,
() => {
var options = new ChromeOptions();
options.AddArguments("headless");
using(IWebDriver driver = new ChromeDriver(options)) {
PerformTestOperations(driver);
}
}
);
}
[Test]
public void TestFirefoxHeadlessExecutionTime() {
Profile
(
"TestFirefoxHeadlessExecutionTime",
10,
() => {
var options = new FirefoxOptions();
options.AddArguments("--headless");
using(IWebDriver driver = new FirefoxDriver(options)) {
PerformTestOperations(driver);
}
}
);
}These are the tests for Chrome, Chrome Headless Mode, Firefox, Firefox Headless, Edge, and PhantomJS.
Benchmark Results
As you can see the results are kind of interesting. The headless mode of Mozilla Firefox performs 3.68% better than the UI version. This is a disappointment since the Chrome's headless mode achieves > 30% better time than the UI one. The other headless driver PhantomJS delivers 34.92% better than the Chrome's headless mode. Surprisingly for me, the Edge browser beats all of them.
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