How to use Enum VirtualAuthenticatorOptions.Protocol class of org.openqa.selenium.virtualauthenticator package

UPDATED POST 05-30-2021

This is the hardest question that I have every tried to answer on Stack Overflow. Because it involved the interactions of several code bases written in multiple languages (Java, Rust and C++). This complexity made the question potentially unsolvable.

My last crack at this likely unsolvable question:

Within the code in your question you are modifying the file user.js This file is still used by Selenium.

public FirefoxProfile() {
    this(null);
  }

  /**
   * Constructs a firefox profile from an existing profile directory.
   * <p>
   * Users who need this functionality should consider using a named profile.
   *
   * @param profileDir The profile directory to use as a model.
   */
  public FirefoxProfile(File profileDir) {
    this(null, profileDir);
  }

  @Beta
  protected FirefoxProfile(Reader defaultsReader, File profileDir) {
    if (defaultsReader == null) {
      defaultsReader = onlyOverrideThisIfYouKnowWhatYouAreDoing();
    }

    additionalPrefs = new Preferences(defaultsReader);

    model = profileDir;
    verifyModel(model);

    File prefsInModel = new File(model, "user.js");
    if (prefsInModel.exists()) {
      StringReader reader = new StringReader("{\"frozen\": {}, \"mutable\": {}}");
      Preferences existingPrefs = new Preferences(reader, prefsInModel);
      acceptUntrustedCerts = getBooleanPreference(existingPrefs, ACCEPT_UNTRUSTED_CERTS_PREF, true);
      untrustedCertIssuer = getBooleanPreference(existingPrefs, ASSUME_UNTRUSTED_ISSUER_PREF, true);
      existingPrefs.addTo(additionalPrefs);
    } else {
      acceptUntrustedCerts = true;
      untrustedCertIssuer = true;
    }

    // This is not entirely correct but this is not stored in the profile
    // so for now will always be set to false.
    loadNoFocusLib = false;

    try {
      defaultsReader.close();
    } catch (IOException e) {
      throw new WebDriverException(e);
    }
  }

So in theory you should be able to modify capabilities.rs in the geckodriver source code. That file contains the temp_dir.

As I stated this in only a theory, because when I looked at the Firefox source, which has temp_dir spread throughout the code base.

ORIGINAL POST 05-26-2021

I'm not sure that you can prevent Selenium from creating a temporary Firefox Profile.

From the gecko documents:

"Profiles are created in the systems temporary folder. This is also where the encoded profile is extracted when profile is provided. By default geckodriver will create a new profile in this location."

The only solution that I see at the moment would require you modify the Geckodriver source files to prevent the creation of temporary folders/profiles.

I'm currently looking at the source. These files might be the correct ones, but I need to look at the source more:

• https://searchfox.org/mozilla-central/source/browser/app/profile/firefox.js

• https://searchfox.org/mozilla-central/source/testing/mozbase/mozprofile/mozprofile/profile.py

Here are some other files that need to be combed through:

https://searchfox.org/mozilla-central/search?q=tempfile&path=

This looks promising:

https://searchfox.org/mozilla-central/source/testing/geckodriver/doc/Profiles.md

"geckodriver uses [profiles] to instrument Firefox’ behaviour. The user will usually rely on geckodriver to generate a temporary, throwaway profile. These profiles are deleted when the WebDriver session expires.

In cases where the user needs to use custom, prepared profiles, geckodriver will make modifications to the profile that ensures correct behaviour. See [Automation preferences] below on the precedence of user-defined preferences in this case.

Custom profiles can be provided two different ways:

1. by appending --profile /some/location to the [args capability], which will instruct geckodriver to use the profile in-place;

I found this question on trying to do this: how do I use an existing profile in-place with Selenium Webdriver?

Also here is an issue that was raised in selenium on Github concerning the temp directory. https://github.com/SeleniumHQ/selenium/issues/8645

Looking through the source of geckodriver v0.29.1 I found a file where the profile is loaded.

source: capabilities.rs

   fn load_profile(options: &Capabilities) -> WebDriverResult<Option<Profile>> {
        if let Some(profile_json) = options.get("profile") {
            let profile_base64 = profile_json.as_str().ok_or_else(|| {
                WebDriverError::new(ErrorStatus::InvalidArgument, "Profile is not a string")
            })?;
            let profile_zip = &*base64::decode(profile_base64)?;

            // Create an emtpy profile directory
            let profile = Profile::new()?;
            unzip_buffer(
                profile_zip,
                profile
                    .temp_dir
                    .as_ref()
                    .expect("Profile doesn't have a path")
                    .path(),
            )?;

            Ok(Some(profile))
        } else {
            Ok(None)
        }
    }

source: marionette.rs

    fn start_browser(&mut self, port: u16, options: FirefoxOptions) -> WebDriverResult<()> {
        let binary = options.binary.ok_or_else(|| {
            WebDriverError::new(
                ErrorStatus::SessionNotCreated,
                "Expected browser binary location, but unable to find \
             binary in default location, no \
             'moz:firefoxOptions.binary' capability provided, and \
             no binary flag set on the command line",
            )
        })?;

        let is_custom_profile = options.profile.is_some();

        let mut profile = match options.profile {
            Some(x) => x,
            None => Profile::new()?,
        };

        self.set_prefs(port, &mut profile, is_custom_profile, options.prefs)
            .map_err(|e| {
                WebDriverError::new(
                    ErrorStatus::SessionNotCreated,
                    format!("Failed to set preferences: {}", e),
                )
            })?;

        let mut runner = FirefoxRunner::new(&binary, profile);

        runner.arg("--marionette");
        if self.settings.jsdebugger {
            runner.arg("--jsdebugger");
        }
        if let Some(args) = options.args.as_ref() {
            runner.args(args);
        }

        // https://developer.mozilla.org/docs/Environment_variables_affecting_crash_reporting
        runner
            .env("MOZ_CRASHREPORTER", "1")
            .env("MOZ_CRASHREPORTER_NO_REPORT", "1")
            .env("MOZ_CRASHREPORTER_SHUTDOWN", "1");

        let browser_proc = runner.start().map_err(|e| {
            WebDriverError::new(
                ErrorStatus::SessionNotCreated,
                format!("Failed to start browser {}: {}", binary.display(), e),
            )
        })?;
        self.browser = Some(Browser::Host(browser_proc));

        Ok(())
    }

    pub fn set_prefs(
        &self,
        port: u16,
        profile: &mut Profile,
        custom_profile: bool,
        extra_prefs: Vec<(String, Pref)>,
    ) -> WebDriverResult<()> {
        let prefs = profile.user_prefs().map_err(|_| {
            WebDriverError::new(
                ErrorStatus::UnknownError,
                "Unable to read profile preferences file",
            )
        })?;

        for &(ref name, ref value) in prefs::DEFAULT.iter() {
            if !custom_profile || !prefs.contains_key(name) {
                prefs.insert((*name).to_string(), (*value).clone());
            }
        }

        prefs.insert_slice(&extra_prefs[..]);

        if self.settings.jsdebugger {
            prefs.insert("devtools.browsertoolbox.panel", Pref::new("jsdebugger"));
            prefs.insert("devtools.debugger.remote-enabled", Pref::new(true));
            prefs.insert("devtools.chrome.enabled", Pref::new(true));
            prefs.insert("devtools.debugger.prompt-connection", Pref::new(false));
        }

        prefs.insert("marionette.log.level", logging::max_level().into());
        prefs.insert("marionette.port", Pref::new(port));

        prefs.write().map_err(|e| {
            WebDriverError::new(
                ErrorStatus::UnknownError,
                format!("Unable to write Firefox profile: {}", e),
            )
        })
    }
}

After looking through the gecko source it looks like mozprofile::profile::Profile is coming from FireFox and not geckodriver

It seems that you might have issues with profiles when you migrate to Selenium 4.

ref: https://github.com/SeleniumHQ/selenium/issues/9417

For Selenium 4 we have deprecated the use of profiles as there are other mechanisms that we can do to make the start up faster. Please use the Options class to set preferences that you need and if you need to use an addon use the driver.install_addon("path/to/addon") you can install selenium 4, which is in beta, via pip install selenium --pre

I noted in your code you were writing to user.js, which is a custom file for FireFox. Have you considered creating on these files manually outside of Gecko?

Also have you looked at mozprofile?

According to this answer from Jim Evans, who is heavily involved with WebDriver for Internet Explorer, this isn't possible:

Internet Explorer doesn't use profiles. It's a limitation of the browser itself, not the IE driver. As such, there is no way to automatically download files to a specified location with Internet Explorer.

Also:

As far as I am aware, there is no difference between Microsoft Edge and Internet Explorer with respect to using "profiles." The profile is still tied to the logged-in user account in Windows.

So, in a sense, the directory already is specified. The point is that you can't override it via WebDriver.

"If you're running selenium tests against a Java application, then it makes sense to drive your tests with Java." This is untrue. It makes no difference what the web application is written in.

Personally I prefer python because it's equally as powerful as other languages, such as Java, and far less verbose making code maintenance less of a headache. However, if you choose a language, don't write it like you were programming in another language. For example if you're writing in Python, don't write like you were using Java.

The key thing here is the resolution, you must ensure that resolution is the same for base "golden" images and those you capture during test.

1. Set size of the browser window to fixed size, eg. (1920x1080),
2. Make all screenshots in this resolution,
3. During the test: before each image-comparison check if the window size is (1920x1080) if not I change it temporarily,
4. Take screenshot,
5. Compare image with original "golden" img
6. Do window maximize

Other solution is to capture screenshots of single WebElement rather than whole page, because WebElements often are resolution independent.

You can't do this with a CSS selector, because CSS selectors don't have a fine-grained enough approach to express "the text node contained in the DIV but not its other contents". You can do that with an XPath locator, though:

driver.findElement(By.xpath("//div[@id='recipient_div_3']/text()")).getText()

That XPath expression will identify just the single text node that is a direct child of the DIV, rather than all the text contained within it and its child nodes.

We use Selenium in conjunction with JUnit. The beauty of this method is the ease of creation of the JUnit tests since we record the Selenium tests in the Selenium IDE and then simply export them to JUnit (though some small tweaking is often necessary). You can then fairly easily integrate them into your continuous integration build and set a job to run them every hour or whatever suits. What I like about the JUnit approach is that everyone on my team is already intimately familiar with JUnit, so no learning curve required.

I'd also recommend checking out Selenium Grid which allows you to execute your tests in parallel allowing you to get through a lot more in a shorter time especially if you can take advantage of executing them across multiple machines.

java.lang.UnsupportedClassVersionError happens because the code was compiled with a higher version of Java than the one you're running it.

Version 51.0 of a class file corresponds to java 7

J2SE 8 = 52,
J2SE 7 = 51,
J2SE 6.0 = 50,
J2SE 5.0 = 49,
JDK 1.4 = 48,
JDK 1.3 = 47,
JDK 1.2 = 46,
JDK 1.1 = 45

You need to upgrade your JDK from Java 6 to Java 7 or higher.

Here's a couple of reasons off the top of my head:

1) You can hook your selenium tests into your build process (and hence your CI process).

2) You can use JUnit assertions.

3) You can build up multiple suites of JUnit tests (which can then be run in parallel).

I'm sure there's more but I guess it depends on the number of tests you have and the size of the project you are working on. If you're project already has a set of JUnit tests then it's quite nice to be able to write selenium tests without too much effort.

Use this when you run your code on a local machine:

private WebDriver driver = null;

public void open() throws Exception
{
    driver = new FirefoxDriver();
}

And this when you run your code on a remote server:

private WebDriver driver = null;

public void openHeadless() throws Exception
{
    FirefoxBinary binary = new FirefoxBinary(new File("/usr/local/bin/firefox"));
    binary.setEnvironmentProperty("DISPLAY",System.getProperty("lmportal.xvfb.id",":99"));
    driver = new FirefoxDriver(binary,null);
}