Headless Selenium for Windows

It is quite inconvenient that a browser window pops up when running Selenium tests. It might cause tests to fail because such window needs to hold user input focus. That is the case with IE at least.

In Linux world, this is solved by running browsers in a virtual frame-buffer. Similar approach can be taken on Windows platform as well.

Contrary to popular believe, Windows is fully multi-user OS. On top of that, it supports virtual desktops even though it is not very often used compared to Linux desktop environments.

This application uses virtual desktops to run web browsers in so that they do not disturb the main user desktop.

It can be used by any language supported by Selenium Webdriver (Java, C#, Ruby, ...).

Download

Binaries can be downloaded from https://github.com/kybu/headless-selenium-for-win/releases

Firefox & Chrome

Selenium uses "drivers" to control web browsers. They are standalone executables driving browsers. headless_ie_selenium.exe by default looks for the IE driver in PATH, but it can be instructed to use other drivers as well. All command line arguments are forwarded to the driver, so the HEADLESS_DRIVER environment variable is used to specify the driver. Put the driver in one of the PATH directories.

Set the HEADLESS_DRIVER environment variable to geckodriver.exe for headless Firefox.

Internet Explorer

When using IE, please pay full attention to configure the driver correctly. All necessary details can be found at https://code.google.com/p/selenium/wiki/InternetExplorerDriver in the 'Required Configuration' section and at http://heliumhq.com/docs/internet_explorer

Setup

Selenium uses a standalone executable called IEDriverServer.exe to drive the IE browser window. Selenium has to be instructed to use the 'headless_ie_selenium.exe' executable to run tests headlessly.

headless_ie_selenium.exe creates a virtual desktop and runs IEDriverServer.exe inside of it. Any command line parameters are passed on to the IE driver.

IEDriverServer.exe has to be stored in the searchable path.

New virtual desktop name is HeadlessDesktop. If you want to create a unique desktop name each time the headless_ie_selenium.exe executable is run, variable HEADLESS_UNIQUE has to exist in the environment. Its value does not matter, unique desktop name will be generated as long as this variable is present.

Basic Ruby example

Following example uses www.google.com search to retrieve weather in London.

require 'selenium-webdriver'

Dir.chdir(File.dirname $0)

# Generate unique desktop name each run
ENV['HEADLESS_UNIQUE'] = 1

# Find the Headless IE binary.
headlessBinary =
  if File.exists?('../Debug/headless_ie_selenium.exe')
    '../Debug/headless_ie_selenium.exe'
  elsif File.exists?('../Release/headless_ie_selenium.exe')
    '../Release/headless_ie_selenium.exe'
  else
    raise 'Cound not find headless_ie_selenium.exe!'
  end

puts "Headless IE binary found at: #{headlessBinary}"

# The most important part!
Selenium::WebDriver::IE.driver_path = headlessBinary

driver = Selenium::WebDriver.for :ie
driver.get 'https://www.google.com'

sleep 2

searchInput = driver.find_element :name => 'q'

searchInput.send_keys "london weather"
searchInput.submit

sleep 2

weather = driver.find_element :id => 'wob_wc'

puts weather.text

driver.quit

Output might be something like this. 'Sunny Weather' can be retrieved only on rare occasions:

Headless IE binary: ../Debug/headless_ie_selenium.exe
London, UK
Tuesday 11:00
Partly Cloudy
19
°C | °F
Precipitation: 3%
Humidity: 69%
Wind: 0 mph
TemperaturePrecipitationWind
1921211915141311
12:0015:0018:0021:0000:0003:0006:0009:00
Tue
22°12°
Wed
21°11°
Thu
22°12°
Fri
22°13°
Sat
23°13°
Sun
23°16°
Mon
22°14°
Tue
22°13°

Executables

'Headless Selenium for Windows' comes with these two binaries: desktop_utils.exe and headless_ie_selenium.exe

headless_ie_selenium.exe

This executable runs IE Webdriver IEDriverServer.exe headlessly. It is meant to be used by Selenium Webdriver library instead of IE Webdriver. Other Selenium drivers can be used by specifying HEADLESS_DRIVER environment variable.

desktop_utils.exe

Generic Windows virtual desktop utility. It can run applications in virtual desktops, etc ...

Command line options:

Desktop utils v1.4, Peter Vrabel (c) 2014-2017:
  -h [ --help ]               Feeling desperate?
  -r [ --run ] arg            Command to run headlessly.
  -n [ --desktop ] arg        Set the headless desktop name. Used with '--run'.
                              Optional, default = HeadlessDesktop
  -l [ --list ]               List available desktops of current Window
                              station.
  -s [ --switch-to ] arg      Switch to a desktop. Takes a desktop name from
                              the list of desktops.
  -t [ --switch-to-default ]  Switch to the default desktop. Can be used if you
                              are being stranded.
  -x [ --no-explorer ]        Don't run explorer in the created desktop

Technical details

Tested on Win 7.

Supported browsers: IE, Firefox, Chrome.

Developed using VS 2013 Express, Boost 1.59 and a bit of system level programming skills.

kybu / headless-selenium-for-win

readme