Boost Your Testing Efficiency with Headless Browser Test Automation

Summary:?

Headless browser test automation is a useful method for testing software. It lets you run tests in a browser without showing the graphical visual interface (GUI). This is especially handy for continuous integration pipelines, where you need tests to run quickly and use fewer resources. Since there's no need for a visual display, tests run faster and can be smoothly added to development processes. In today's world, testing is a key part of creating new software. Automation has become very important for testing because it offers speed, accuracy, and dependability. Among different testing methods, headless browser test automation is popular because it is both efficient and effective.??

What is Headless Browser Testing??

Headless browser testing means running a browser without showing any graphical interface (GUI). The browser still works the same way as it does with a GUI, however because there’s no display, tests run faster and consume fewer resources.?

Why Choose Headless Browser Testing??

1. Speed: Headless browsers are quicker because they don’t show the visual parts of a webpage. This means tests run faster, giving quicker feedback and speeding up development.?
2. Resource Efficiency: Headless browsers don’t need a display, so they require less processing power. This makes them great for systems with limited hardware.?
3. Continuous Integration (CI) and Continuous Deployment (CD): Headless browsers are perfect for CI/CD pipelines where tests need to run often and at the same time. Their low resource use means you can run many tests at once.?
4. Environment: Headless tests can run in any setup, like virtual machines, containers, or cloud platforms. This flexibility helps in scaling automated testing across different systems.?

Benefits of Headless Browser Testing:?

• Faster Test Execution: Without the GUI, tests focus only on logic and actions, which makes them run much faster.?
• Cost-Effective: Using fewer resources means lower costs, especially in cloud environments where you pay based on resource usage.?
• Scalability: Headless browsers are lightweight, so you can run many tests at once without putting too much load on the system.?
• Easy Integration: Headless browsers work well with popular test automation tools like Selenium, Puppeteer, and Cypress, making it simple to switch to headless testing with few changes to your existing scripts.?
• Quicker Debugging: Faster test execution means you can find and fix issues more quickly, speeding up the development process.?

Let's go through few examples of Headless Browser testing using different tools:?

Selenium with Java:?

import org.openqa.selenium.WebDriver;

import org.openqa.selenium.chrome.ChromeDriver;

import org.openqa.selenium.chrome.ChromeOptions;

public class HeadlessTest {?

public static void main(String[] args) {

ChromeOptions options = new ChromeOptions();?

?????? options.addArguments("--headless");???????

WebDriver driver = new ChromeDriver(options);

??????? driver.get("https://example.com");? ????????

System.out.println("Page title is: " + driver.getTitle());?

??????? driver.quit();

?? }?

}?

Selenium with Python:?

from selenium import webdriver

from selenium.webdriver.chrome.options import Options

options = Options()

options.add_argument("--headless")

driver = webdriver.Chrome(options=options)

driver.get("https://example.com")

print("Page title is:", driver.title)

driver.quit()

Robot Framework:?

?****Settings****?

Library??SeleniumLibrary?

*** Variables ***?

${HEADLESS_OPTIONS} --headless?

*** Test Cases ***?

Headless Browser Test Open Browser??? https://example.com??? chrome??? options=${HEADLESS_OPTIONS}

Log Page title is: ${title}

[Teardown]?? Close Browser?

Karate framework:?

function() {?

var config = {???

browserOptions: ['--headless']?

};?

return config;

}

*configure driver = { type: 'chrome', headless: true }

*driver 'https://example.com'

* print 'Page title is:', driver.title()

Cypress:?

{?

"chromeWebSecurity": false,?

"baseUrl": "https://example.com",?

"viewportWidth": 1280,

"viewportHeight": 720,?

"headless": true,

"browser": "chrome"

}?

npx cypress run --headless --browser chrome

WebDriver IO?

?exports.config = {?

capabilities: [{

maxInstances: 5,

browserName: 'chrome',? ????????

'goog:chromeOptions': {

args: ['--headless', '--disable-gnu']

}

}],

// other configurations

};?

Conclusion:?

Headless browser test automation has many benefits, especially for speed, using fewer resources, and handling large-scale testing. It works well for adding CI/CD pipelines and running many automated tests. As more companies look to improve their development processes, headless testing is likely to become a common practice.?

Ref Links:?

https://www.browserstack.com/guide/selenium-headless-browser-testing?

https://www.browserstack.com/guide/headless-browser-testing-selenium-python?

https://webdriver.io/docs/capabilities/?

https://www.browserstack.com/guide/cypress-headless-mode-tutorial?