SELENIUM2 supports no interface operation (Htmlunit and PHANTOMJS)

SELENIUM2 supports testing through various driver (firfoxdriver,iternetexplorerdriver,operadriver,chromedriver) to drive real-world browsers.

In fact, selenium is also supported without interface browser operation. such as Htmlunit and PHANTOMJS. They are not real browsers, the runtime will not render the page display content, but support page element lookup, JS execution, etc., because no CSS and GUI rendering, the efficiency is much faster than the real browser.

1.htmlUnit is a Java-implemented class browser program that is included in the selenium server without the need for a driver to instantiate directly.

Use the following: Webdriver Driver = new htmlunitdriver ();// Webdriver Driver = new Htmlunitdriver (TRUE);//Support JS  2.PhantomJS is a server-side JavaScript API based on WebKit (WebKit is an open source browser engine, Chrome,Safari is the browser engine ), the main application scenario is: Web testing without browser, page access automation, screen capture, network monitoring Use the following:Webdriver Driver = new Phantomjsdriver (); 3. In order to see whether the above two non-interface browser is suitable for the current project group front-end automation, did some preliminary research, the results are as follows: 

Behavior description	Behavior	Htmlunitdriver	Htmlunitdriver (True)	Phantomjsdriver	Firefoxdriver
text box input	Enter text	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Buttons button	Click the button	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Hyperlink A	Click	Yes	Yes	No	Yes
Drop-down list select	Select options	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
check box checkbox	Click	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Alert (Displays a warning box with a specified message and an OK button)	Click	No	No	No	Yes
Promprt (displays a dialog box to prompt the user for input)	Click	No	No	No	Yes

 The final pre-research results are not suitable for our system because there are many alert in our system4. Summarize the pros and cons of HTMLUNITDRIVER,PHANTOMJS vs Real Browser drivers

Driver type	Advantages	Disadvantages	Application
Real Browser driver	Real-world simulation of user behavior	Low efficiency and stability	Browser compatibility test
Htmlunit	Fast speed	JS Engine (RHINOJS) is not the mainstream browser support, so the JS support is not good enough	Page test with a small number of JS
Phantomjs	Medium speed, simulated behavior close to reality	Cannot simulate behavior of different/specific browsers	Functional testing of non-GUI

 

Summarize:

If you want to test the page JS is not a lot, and do not need to do a compatibility test, Htmlunitdriver is the best choice

If you need to do a compatibility test, you should still choose the real browser driver (if you want to improve the speed of automation, you can consider using Testng,selenium grid parallel test)

SELENIUM2 supports no interface operation (Htmlunit and PHANTOMJS)