Tag Archives: Automating browser extension testing

Abhay 11:50 am on November 6, 2014
Tags: Automating browser extension testing, chrome extension automation, firefox extension automation   

Code : Automating Extension automation with Selenium

Below code is for Chrome. This will work for Firefox  with little change in code.

// Load extension file
File file = new File(“chrome.crx”);
ChromeOptions options = new ChromeOptions();
options.addExtensions(file);

// Launch browser instance with the extension
WebDriver driver = new ChromeDriver(options);

// Access Extension in browser window .. This further allows you to automate all the actions through Selenium
driver.get(“extension://palgcoflnoaklkflllnmheiollkgkipm/popup.html”);

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Abhay 6:07 am on November 2, 2014
Tags: Automate Chrome extension testing, Automating browser extension testing, Automating Firefox extension testing   

Approach to Automation of firefox and Chrome extensions using Selenium

Browser extensions does not use browser space for it’s GUI display and user interaction, this making it impossible to automate it through Selenium.

But, fortunately, you can run the extension in browser space with little trick and with that you can automate it using Selenium

Below steps will help you do exactly same for a Chrome extension called packman ( https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/pacman/palgcoflnoaklkflllnmheiollkgkipm)

Steps:

Way 1:

1.  go to Extension location on the disk . In case of Mac , it’s ~//Library/Application Support/Google/Chrome/Default/Extensions

2. You can find all the extension (installed) here, you can go to folder “palgcoflnoaklkflllnmheiollkgkipm”

palgcoflnoaklkflllnmheiollkgkipm can be found in the Chrome webstore URL

3. find all the html file under this folder. In most cases, you’ll find only one. ( You can use command like find . -name *html ). In case of Packman, you will find  –> ./1.26_0/popup.html

4. Access Pacman in browser interface

Type below in your Chrome Location bar:  chrome-extension://palgcoflnoaklkflllnmheiollkgkipm/popup.html

You can access packman in your browser i.e. You can automate them using Selenium.

On Firefox, the URL will be

chrome://pacman/content/pacman.xul

You can refer to below file to find the URL :

~/Library/Application\ Support/Firefox/Profiles/<profileName>/extensions/pacman\@oppermann.ch.xpi

However, there are some trick involved when it comes to automating it with Selenium. I’ll cover steps for doing it with Java/Python on Firefox and Chrome in next blog.