How can I reduce the execution speed in webdriver so that I can view properly what is happening on browser?

Question

I want to reduce the speed for execution of script so that I can view the execution properly on browser. I want do this in webdriver.

Answer 1

You can try setting implicit wait time. (Documentation)

// 5 seconds implicit wait (C# code)
IWebDriver driver = new FirefoxDriver();
driver.Manage().Timeouts().ImplicitlyWait(TimeSpan.FromSeconds(5));

Answer 2

This is how I would debug a Selenium session to find out what is happening:

Step-by-step debugging: Most IDE's allow you todo step-by-step debugging, you could set a break point just before the point you want to investigate. This will pause the execution of the test and lets you examine the browser with its own tools. You can step thru each line of code one by one and monitor the behavior. See this video for example

Video recording: Record the test session with a screen-recorder or use one of the online Selenium grids like Sauce labs or TestingBot, both offer to record of the test session by default and give enough free minutes to analyze most issues. After the recording, you can playback frame by frame.

Sleeps: Like others suggest, you can add a sleep or increase the default wait-times. Personally, I am not a fan of this because you might need to rerun the test a couple of times if the sleep is not long enough.

Answer 3

I've been looking into this quite a lot over the past few days. By far the simplest way to solve this is to create a driver property, rather than a variable and add a wait to the get.

  private IWebDriver _driver;
    public IWebDriver driver
    {
        get{ Thread.Sleep(500);
            return _driver;
        }

        set
        { _driver = value; }
    }

This means that anytime your driver is requested, which is anytime you do anything in the browser, it will slow it down by the specified amount.

Answer 4

You could put a sleep after every instruction - or around the instructions you are interested in.

Answer 5

Some tools allow for defining before scenario, after scenario, before step, after step - hooks, which are called as a setup or teardown for a scenario or even for a separate step in it. If you do have such hooks, then add a delay into an "after step" hook and you'll be fine.

Answer 6

The easiest way to do that in selenium webDriver is to extend your preferred WebDriver (e.g. FirefoxDriver) and override the execute methods.

Write a Thread.sleep(yourWaitTime) in every execute method before return.

Voila there is your speed reduce:

@Override
protected Response execute(String driverCommand, Map<String, ?> parameters) {
    try {
        // wait 500 millis and after that run command
        Thread.sleep(500);
    } catch (InterruptedException ex) {}
    return super.execute(driverCommand, parameters);
}

Answer 7

There is several different ways to do this. I personally have a UI that controls my automation script that allows me to go step by step (in record mode or playback), full automation or however I like. Just build a UI to control the flow and then have different functions that can be controlled by the UI as needed.

For example, a step by step UI would do a function called nextStep() nextStep would find the next desired step and perform that action.

A fully automated one would check a boolean for true while automating and as long as it's true, it keeps going. Set up a pause/stop button that changes that boolean and that is done.

In order to create functionality like this, in a simplistic way:

Create a UI that lists out your test steps, how you do this is up to you. I made mine editable and drag and drop within a table (JTree for Suites, JList for Cases, JTable for Steps).

Add Stop and Play ToggleButtons on the UI in a button group Add an actionEventListener to the play button that grabs the selected step(s) and runs them. Between each step have it check that the play button is still selected. When it is no longer selected, the execution will stop.

For things like groovy script just add in a groovy console and create a trigger (IE. Keyword being Groovy=script) and then have the console parse that whenever it sees it.

I also added in keywords like screenshot, pause, wait and such. This gives the ability for the system to stop automatically until user intervention occurs.

Answer 8

Firefox selenium web extension has an option to make the test run slower or faster using a sliding bar. Not sure if IE or Chrome has this if not i would just use the debugger.

Answer 9

By looking at your question I have one possible solution for you.

If your test platform supports it, try adding priority to each test method, because multiple @Test methods run in parallel.

Answer 10

I don't have enough reputation to comment, but I think Eduard Sukharev above has the best answer - i.e. to add a wait to your after step code, as this involves just a one line change that you can easily add/remove. This is how I've done it in a couple of frameworks:

In Behat, I added a sleep to the after step:

/**
* @AfterStep
*/
public function after_step(AfterStepScope $scope) {
    //whatever else you want to do in the after_step
    sleep (x); //x is the number of seconds to sleep before continuing
}

In Robot framework, there's a function called 'Set Selenium Speed' which will wait the specified number of seconds between steps.

Answer 11

I also tried but could not figure out how to slow down selenium execution, and then i tried workaround to slow it down. Used 'net limitter' tool to control network bandwidth (trial version is available), you can put bandwidth limit to chrome driver so that it will communicate with selenium server and chrome browser slowly. This way you can simulate slow execution of test suites.

Answer 12

I think this will slow down each step by sleep interval of 3 seconds. Try it

WebDriverWait driverWait = new WebDriverWait( new SystemClock(), Driver, TimeSpan.FromSeconds( 20 ), TimeSpan.FromSeconds( 3 ) );

TimeSpan.FromSeconds( 3 ) is the sleep interval here.

Note: I am using ChromeDriver.

Answer 13

If you are looking to slow down or pause your execution, press F8 (if you are using chrome). If you are looking to get some info from the dev tool you have open the dev tool first and then press F8 (or function F8 on mac). This will pause your browser. I hope this help.