Error trying to add chrome extension in nightwatchjs

Question

I am trying to add an extension to my chromedriver for use in my test.
According to the nightwatchjs website here,

extensions | array of strings | A list of Chrome extensions to install on startup. Each item in the list should be a base-64 encoded packed Chrome extension (.crx)

I used another chrome extension to pull down the encoded .crx file from the chrome store and have it in my project.

Here is the relevant part of my conf.js file:

test_settings: {
    default: {
        launch_url: launch_url,
        screenshots : {
            enabled : true,
            on_failure: true,
            on_error: true,
            path : "./nw_out"
        },
        desiredCapabilities: {
            browserName: 'chrome',
            javascriptEnabled: true,
            chromeOptions : {
                extensions: ['./extension_1_5.crx'] //this is the line that is erroring
            }
        }
    }
}

Here is my test file (I understand it's not the most clean at the moment, but will work that out once I get this problem resolved).

module.exports = {
'Trello Card Data' : function (browser) {
    browser
        .windowMaximize()
        .url('https://trello.com/')
        .pause(3000)
        .useCss()
        .click('#content > div > p > a')
        .useXpath()
        .setValue('//*[@id="user"]', '<email>')
        .setValue('//*[@id="password"]', '<password>')
        .useCss()
        .click('#login')
        .pause(5000)
        .end();
    }
};

When I run this test (configuration is working when I remove the chromeOptions from the desiredCapabilities), I am getting the following error:

Error retrieving a new session from the selenium server Connection refused! Is selenium server started? { state: 'unhandled error',
sessionId: null, hCode: 3329947, value: { additionalInformation: '\nDriver info: org.openqa.selenium.chrome.ChromeDriver', localizedMessage: 'unknown error: cannot process extension #1\nfrom unknown error: cannot base64 decode\n (Driver info: chromedriver=2.20.353145, platform=Windows NT 6.1 SP1 x86_64) (WARNING: The server did not provide any stacktrace information)\nCommand duration or timeout: 655 milliseconds\nBuild info: version: \'2.53.0\', revision: \'35ae25b\', time: \'2016-03-15 17:00:58\'\nSystem info: host: \'\', ip: \'\', os.name: \'Windows 7\', os.arch: \'x86\', os.version: \'6.1\', java.version: \'1.8.0_101\'\nDriver info: org.openqa.selenium.chrome.ChromeDriver', systemInformation: 'System info: host: \'\', ip: \'\', os.name: \'Windows 7\', os.arch: \'x86\', os.version: \'6.1\', java.version: \'1.8.0_101\'', supportUrl: null, cause: null, suppressed: [], message: 'unknown error: cannot process extension #1\nfrom unknown error: cannot base64 decode\n (Driver info: chromedriver=2.20.353145, platform=Windows NT 6.1 SP1 x86_64) (WARNING: The server did not provide any stacktrace information)\nCommand duration or timeout: 655 milliseconds\nBuild info: version: \'2.53.0\', revision: \'35ae25b\', time: \'2016-03-15 17:00:58\'\nSystem info: host: \'\', ip: \'\', os.name: \'Windows 7\', os.arch: \'x86\', os.version: \'6.1\', java.version: \'1.8.0_101\'\nDriver info: org.openqa.selenium.chrome.ChromeDriver', hCode: 19834450, class: 'org.openqa.selenium.WebDriverException', buildInformation: { buildRevision: '35ae25b', buildTime: '2016-03-15 17:00:58', releaseLabel: '2.53.0', hCode: 10545182, class: 'org.openqa.selenium.internal.BuildInfo' }, screen: null }, class: 'org.openqa.selenium.remote.Response', status: 13 }

Any help in determining the solution to this would be greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

It looks like you simply need to encode the file to a base64 string:

chromeOptions : {
    extensions: [encode('./extension_1_5.crx')]
}

function encode(file) {
    var stream = require('fs').readFileSync(file);
    return new Buffer(stream).toString('base64');
}

Answer 2

Adding this because SO doesn't allow code in comments:

module.exports = (function (settings) {
 settings.test_settings.default.desiredCapabilities.chromeOptions = {
    'extensions': [ encode("path/to/extension.crx") ]
  }
  return settings;

})(require('./nightwatch.json'));

function encode(file) {
  var stream = require('fs').readFileSync(file);
  return new Buffer(stream).toString('base64');
}