[FIXED] Can Selenium be run on a server to automate tasks, or does it need a browser to run the task inside of

Issue

I was reading over the Selenium docs and i couldn't quite work out whether you could run it on a server - as part of a larger web app.

ie. something happens in the web app that triggers the automated Selenium script to run, then returns result to web app.

Is that a possible use of Selenium or does it always need an actual browser to run the tasks inside of, or can it run a virtual browser for itself ?

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Solution

Selenium always need an instance of a browser to control.

Luckily, there are browsers out there that aren't that heavy as the usual browsers you know. You don't have to open IE / Firefox / Chrome / Opera. You can use HtmlUnitDriver which controls HTMLUnit - a headless Java browser that does not have any UI. Or a PhantomJsDriver which drives PhantomJS - another headless browser running on WebKit.

Those headless browsers are much less memory-heavy, usually are faster (since they don't have to render anything), they don't require a graphical interface to be available for the computer they run at and are therefore easily usable server-side.

Answered By - Petr Janeček