Selenium Settings

If Selenium Server is being used, then the connection related settings should be placed under the "selenium"". If both webdriver and selenium dictionaries are present, the selenium options will be merged with the webdriver ones.

The "selenium" settings should also be used when configuring connections to cloud-based testing providers.

Name type default description
start_process boolean false Whether or not to manage the Selenium process automatically.
server_path string none The location of the Selenium jar file. This needs to be specified if start_process is enabled.
E.g.: bin/selenium-server-standalone-2.43.0.jar
log_path string|boolean none The location where the Selenium output.log file will be placed. Defaults to current directory.
To disable Selenium logging, set this to false
version2 boolean false Set this to true if you need to use legacy Selenium Server 2.
port integer 4444 The port number Selenium will listen on and/or Nighwatch will attempt to connect to.
cli_args object none List of cli arguments to be passed to the Selenium process. Here you can set various options for browser drivers, such as:

  • webdriver.firefox.profile: Selenium will by default create a new Firefox profile for each session. If you wish to use an existing Firefox profile you can specify its name here.
    Complete list of Firefox Driver arguments available here.
  • webdriver.chrome.driver: Nightwatch can run the tests using Chrome browser also. To enable this you have to download the ChromeDriver binary and specify it's location here. Also don't forget to specify chrome as the browser name in the desiredCapabilities object.
    More information can be found on the ChromeDriver website.
  • webdriver.ie.driver: Nightwatch works with Internet Explorer also. To enable this you have to download the IE Driver binary and specify it's location here.

    Alternatively you can install the package iedriver from NPM.

    Also you need to specify "internet explorer" as the browser name in the desiredCapabilities object.

Selenium Example Configuration

Here's an example configuration as part of the nightwatch.conf.js which uses a local Selenium Server with support for Firefox, Chrome, and Internet Explorer.

The following NPM packages are assumed to be installed in the current project:

  • geckodriver
  • chromedriver
  • selenium-server
  • iedriver
module.exports = {
  src_folders: [],
  

  test_settings: {
    default: {
    launch_url: 'https://nightwatchjs.org'
  },
  

  selenium: {
    // Selenium Server is running locally and is managed by Nightwatch
    selenium: {
      start_process: true,
      port: 4444,
      server_path: require('selenium-server').path,
      cli_args: {
        'webdriver.gecko.driver': require('geckodriver').path,
        'webdriver.chrome.driver': require('chromedriver').path,
        'webdriver.ie.driver': process.platform === 'win32' ? require('iedriver').path : ''
      }
    },
    webdriver: {
      start_process: false
    }
  },
  

  'selenium.chrome': {
    extends: 'selenium',
    desiredCapabilities: {
      browserName: 'chrome',
      chromeOptions: {
      }
    }
  },
  

  'selenium.firefox': {
    extends: 'selenium',
    desiredCapabilities: {
      browserName: 'firefox'
    }
  },
  

  'selenium.ie': {
    extends: 'selenium',
    desiredCapabilities: {
      browserName: 'internet explorer'
    }
  }
}
}

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