Is there a way to use the same login session on a Selenium WebDriver already opened?

Question

I have spent a while for the solution but couldn't find anything for my specific problem. I am automating a task with Selenium and need to log in a system. If I do it manually, the system will keep the user logged if a new browser tab or window is opened, but with Selenium, this doesn't happen if it is the second run of the program. It will open a new tab and won't even navigate to the url on the code. Is there any way to make the browser reuse the user session from the previous Selenium run? I'm using Java for the automation.

EDIT

Apologies, but I wasn't very clear. I looked for a way to use the opened browser before asking this question, as the question marked as a duplicate of mine asks, but as it doesn't seem feasible I asked about another approach. The thing is an opened browser is called session, but I mean a session when a user is logged in a system and opens a new browser tab or window and can navigate to the same system without logging in again. As I mentioned, on the second run of a Selenium Java program it won't navigate to the same system url nor use the same user session.

Answer 1

Yes, that is easily doable. What you need to do is get the cookies your browser received from the website and keep them in a persistent storage such as a text file or a database.

Beware that due to security reasons, namely Same-origin policy, your webdriver must be in the domain where the cookie was originaly generated to be set, otherwise, it is discarded - https://stackoverflow.com/a/28331099/705147

This little article should get you started: http://www.qaautomationsimplified.com/selenium/selenium-webdriver-get-cookies-from-an-existing-session-and-add-those-to-a-newly-instantiated-webdriver-browser-instance/

Answer 2

First of welcome to SQA SE. Now instead of trying to delve into setup for webdriver's specifics, you can either do all actions in a monolithic fashion with the same session or (as recommended) actually use java as an object oriented language and create classes/methods appropriately to assist your developing and maximize re-usable code, for example the login code.

If for some reason you absolutely need a session to be shared for what you try to achieve,and its not just a case of bad code design that led you to this need, you can take a look at the webdriver specifications for more info.

Answer 3

Declare the driver as static in super class and use it whenever required without initiating it again:

Public class library() {

    public static WebDriver driver;

    public static void launchBrowser(String BrowserName) throws IOException {
        BrowserName.equalsIgnoreCase("Firefox");

        driver = new FirefoxDriver();
        driver.manage().window().maximize();
    }

    @Test(priority = 1)
    public void openApplication() throws Throwable {
        launchBrowser(TestData.Firefox_browser);
    }

    @Test(priority = 2)
    public void enterCredential() throws Throwable {
        userName("id", "login:login_box:username", TestData.username);
        passWord("xpath", "//*[@id='login:login_box:password']", TestData.passWord);
    }
}

Your script will continue with one instance of the browser.