Grid on Selenium

HtmlUnit Remote: Acquiring Remote HtmlUnitDriver Session in Selenium 4 Grid

Mon, 19 Aug 2024 00:00:00 +0000

HTMLUNIT REMOTE

The HtmlUnit Remote project implements a W3C WebDriver protocol wrapper for HtmlUnitDriver, which enables Selenium 4 Grid to supply remote sessions of this headless browser.

Background

To eliminate behavioral differences between local and remote configurations, the Selenium Foundation framework always acquires browser sessions from a Grid instance, managing its own local grid instance when not configured to use an existing grid. Selenium 3 Grid could be configured to supply HtmlUnitDriver sessions, supported by special-case handling within the Node server itself. This handling was not carried over into Selenium 4 Grid, which was completely re-engineered with new architecture and vastly expanded capabilities.

Multi-Arch Images via Docker Selenium

Thu, 23 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000

We’re very happy to announce the landing of Multi-Arch Images for Selenium Grid Server on the Selenium Docker Hub registry!

Motivation

For experimental Docker container images that are able to run on platforms such as the Apple M-series or Raspberry Pi, the community-driven repository initiative hosted at SeleniumHQ-Community/docker-seleniarm. These images are built for separate architectures: linux/arm64 (aarch64), linux/arm/v7 (armhf), and linux/amd64 and published on Seleniarm Docker Hub registry.

In order to bring more awareness to the existence of the Multi-Arch Docker container images, provide more insight and transparency on how the container images are built, as well as overcome challenges in building and maintaining them. We have decided to merge the fork into the main project Docker Selenium and published multi-arch images on Selenium Docker Hub registry.

Scaling a Kubernetes Selenium Grid with KEDA

Fri, 19 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0000

The Issue

If you have any experience with Selenium Grid and Kubernetes you will probably run into an issue with scaling. Kubernetes (K8S) works wonders for scaling up and down applications based on their CPU and Memory usage, but it is not so straightforward when it comes down to applications like Selenium Grid.

The issue is described quite well in this blog post. But in short, the Horizontal Pod AutoScaler (HPA) that is built into Kubernetes checks (by default) for resource consumption to determine if a deployment needs to be scaled up or down. This becomes an issue for Selenium Grid for a couple reasons:

Removing Legacy Protocol Support

Fri, 20 May 2022 00:00:00 +0000

The Selenium team prides itself on how seriously it takes backwards compatibility. A lot of care has gone into the Java bindings, especially, to ensure very few breaking changes over the years. There is Selenium code written 15 years ago that can still run with Selenium 4 libraries! Providing this exceptional amount of support comes with a large maintenance burden, though, and we need to be able to properly meet the needs of the vast majority of our userbase.

Observability in Selenium 4

Mon, 26 Apr 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Diagnosing problems when the Selenium server isn’t working has never been easy. With Selenium 4, we have integrated OpenTelemetry to help you troubleshoot issues, optimize performance, and provide visibility into the system. By making the Selenium server observable, we are putting more power into your hands.

Need for Observability

Selenium server enables distributed testing. Instead of running the browsers for tests locally, the tests use a remote browser driver that points to a server. The server makes “smart” decisions to run tests on different remote servers. Every such remote server is capable of hosting different types of browsers and browser versions.

Selenium Grid 1.0.8 Released

Thu, 10 Jun 2010 00:00:00 +0000

We’re pleased to announce the release of Selenium Grid 1.0.8. This release fixes multithreaded issues with the Selenium Grid hub that appeared randomly under heavy load. If you’ve ever seen a log message about HttpClient being accessed by multiple threads, you definitely want to upgrade. Even if you haven’t, this release is highly recommended for all.

You can download it now or view the changelog. The list of changes is:

Multi-threaded issue with access to HttpClient has been resolved, fixing random crashes on a heavily loaded grids

Many thanks go out to Chris Gulley for identifying and fixing the problem. As always, patches and bug reports are appreciated:

Selenium Grid 1.0.7 Released

Tue, 11 May 2010 00:00:00 +0000

Following up on the Selenium Grid 1.0.6 release, which was mostly a bug fix release, we’re pleased to announce the release of Selenium Grid 1.0.7. This is another bug fix release that focuses primarily on how Selenium Grid handles browser sessions.

You can download it now or view the changelog. The list of changes are:

Hub now instructs remote controls to shutdown a session if the hub is going to remove it due to being idle for too long
Added ability to specify timeout period when waiting for remote controls to become available. Now the client can timeout gracefully and decide what it would like to do next
Handle common case of session ID not being found, either because it timed out or was already closed; rather than raising a NullPointerException we now raise a NoSuchSessionException
Truncate long command response bodies to 128 characters
Retry remote control checks up to three times before deciding that a remote control is unreliable or unresponsive. This prevents aggressive unregistration of hosts that are busy or suffer from network issues

As always, patches and bug reports are appreciated:

The Future of Selenium Grid

Tue, 27 Apr 2010 00:00:00 +0000

As you likely know by now, after years of stewardship Philippe has stepped down as maintainer of Selenium Grid and has named me the new maintainer. In this post, I hope to address the most immediate questions about what this means for the future of Selenium Grid.

Background

I realize many of you may not know who I am. I’ve been using Selenium in some capacity for close to five years now. I love working on open source software and do so primarily through my membership in the Apache Software Foundation and through my GitHub account. I hang out on the #selenium channel with the handle “nirvdrum” and have a personal page that includes some articles I’ve written and other things I’m involved with. Perhaps more importantly, I also rely on Selenium Grid for my latest start-up so I’m very keen on seeing the project mature and evolve.

Selenium Grid 1.0.6 Released

Tue, 13 Apr 2010 00:00:00 +0000

Following up on the Selenium Grid 1.0.5 release, which added self-healing features to ease grid management, we’re pleased to announce the release of Selenium Grid 1.0.6. This is a bug fix release for 1.0.5 with some minor new additions.

You can download it now or view the changelog. The summary of changes are:

Fixed some concurrent modification issues that may have resulted in NullPointerExceptions
Fixed issue with shutting down workers with Rakefile
Added PID file support for hub and worker started via Rakefile, making it easier to use a process monitor such as monit

In case you missed the announcement, Philippe is no longer maintaining Selenium Grid. We thank him for his years of effort and helping the project get to where it is today. This is my first release as the new Selenium Grid maintainer. I will be getting out a new post shortly that lays out the future for the project [UPDATE: The promised post is live]. In the meanwhile, please note the new location of several key resources: