Starting Selenium Server with Nightwatch.js

Question

I was using selenium-webdriver and wanted to try out nightwatch.js to see if it is easier to use. I followed the instructions here. I decided to let Nightwatch automatically start the selenium server for me so I did what I thought was the proper configuration based on the linked provided above. I get an error that I can't figure out and the output says:

Starting selenium server... started - PID:  1760

[Test] Test Suite
=================

Running:  demoTestGoogle

Error retrieving a new session from the selenium server
Error: connect ECONNREFUSED 127.0.0.1:8080
    at Object.exports._errnoException (util.js:856:11)
    at exports._exceptionWithHostPort (util.js:879:20)
    at TCPConnectWrap.afterConnect [as oncomplete] (net.js:1053:14)


Connection refused! Is selenium server started?


Process finished with exit code 1

The selenium debug log file says this

13:43:03.394 INFO - Launching a standalone Selenium Server
13:43:03.474 INFO - Java: Oracle Corporation 25.73-b02
13:43:03.474 INFO - OS: Windows 7 6.1 amd64
13:43:03.483 INFO - v2.52.0, with Core v2.52.0. Built from revision 4c2593c
13:43:03.530 INFO - Driver class not found: com.opera.core.systems.OperaDriver
13:43:03.530 INFO - Driver provider com.opera.core.systems.OperaDriver is not registered
13:43:03.536 INFO - Driver provider org.openqa.selenium.safari.SafariDriver registration is skipped:
registration capabilities Capabilities [{browserName=safari, version=, platform=MAC}] does not match the current platform VISTA
13:43:03.665 INFO - RemoteWebDriver instances should connect to: http://127.0.0.1:4444/wd/hub
13:43:03.665 INFO - Selenium Server is up and running

This is my nightwatch.json file

{
  "src_folders": [ "tests" ],
  "output_folder": "reports",
  "custom_commands_path": "",
  "custom_assertions_path": "",
  "page_objects_path": "",
  "globals_path": "",
  "selenium": {
    "start_process": true,
    "server_path": "./bin/selenium-server-standalone-jar/jar/selenium-server-standalone-2.52.0.jar",
    "start_session" : true,
    "log_path": "",
    "host": "",
    "port": 4444,
    "cli_args": {
      "webdriver.chrome.driver": "",
      "webdriver.ie.driver": ""
    }
  },
  "test_settings": {
    "default": {
      "launch_url": "http://localhost",
      "selenium_port": 8080,
      "selenium_host": "localhost",
      "silent": true,
      "screenshots": {
        "enabled": false,
        "path": ""
      },
      "desiredCapabilities": {
        "browserName": "firefox",
        "javascriptEnabled": true,
        "acceptSslCerts": true
      }
    },
    "chrome": {
      "desiredCapabilities": {
        "browserName": "chrome",
        "javascriptEnabled": true,
        "acceptSslCerts": true
      }
    }
  }
}

Edit: Added demoTestGoogle, I have a nightwatch.js file in which I run and then it runs the demoTestGoogle function.

nightwatch.js which runs demoTestGoogle

require('nightwatch/bin/runner.js');

demoTestGoogle function in separate JS file

this.demoTestGoogle = function (browser) {
    browser
        .url('http://www.google.com')
        .waitForElementVisible('body', 1000)
        .setValue('input[type=text]', 'nightwatch')
        .waitForElementVisible('button[name=btnG]', 1000)
        .click('button[name=btnG]')
        .pause(1000)
        .assert.containsText('#main', 'The Night Watch')
        .end();
};

Looks like two different instances of selenium are trying to run on one port (`8080`). Perhaps you're trying to start another server somewhere in `demoTestGoogle`? — honyovk, Mar 01 '16 at 20:06

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered Nov 13 '18 at 18:49

As suggested by this great guide to Nightwatch, dwyl-learn-nightwatch, you can replace your nightwatch.json file with a .js file to add features like variables, globals and even requiring in Selenium so Nightwatch can see it and run it.

Here's a simple example I modified from that GitHub source to start selenium with its tests. Make sure to install the dependencies in the project, first:

npm install --save-dev nightwatch chromedriver selenium-server

Then replace that JSON file with a .js one, perhaps named nightwatch.conf.js and notice the config options under the selenium key in the config file:

nightwatch.conf.js

const seleniumServer = require("selenium-server");
const chromedriver = require("chromedriver");
const SCREENSHOT_PATH = "./screenshots/";


module.exports = {
  "src_folders": [
    "tests/e2e"
  ],
  "output_folder": "./reports",
  "selenium": {
    "start_process": true,                // tells nightwatch to start/stop the selenium process
    "server_path": seleniumServer.path,
    "host": "127.0.0.1",
    "port": 4444,                         // standard selenium port
    "cli_args": {
      "webdriver.chrome.driver" : chromedriver.path
    }
  },
  "test_settings": {
    "default": {
      "screenshots": {
        "enabled": true,                  // if you want to keep screenshots
        "path": SCREENSHOT_PATH           // save screenshots here
      },
      "globals": {
        "waitForConditionTimeout": 5000   // set a (default) timeout period, maybe 5s
      },
      "desiredCapabilities": {            // use Chrome as the default browser for tests
        "browserName": "chrome"
      }
    },
    "chrome": {
      "desiredCapabilities": {
        "browserName": "chrome",
        "javascriptEnabled": true
      }
    }
  }
}

function padLeft (count) { // theregister.co.uk/2016/03/23/npm_left_pad_chaos/
  return count < 10 ? '0' + count : count.toString();
}

var FILECOUNT = 0; // "global" screenshot file count
/**
 * The default is to save screenshots to the root of your project even though
 * there is a screenshots path in the config object above! ... so we need a
 * function that returns the correct path for storing our screenshots.
 * While we're at it, we are adding some meta-data to the filename, specifically
 * the Platform/Browser where the test was run and the test (file) name.
 */
function imgpath (browser) {
  var a = browser.options.desiredCapabilities;
  var meta = [a.platform];
  meta.push(a.browserName ? a.browserName : 'any');
  meta.push(a.version ? a.version : 'any');
  meta.push(a.name); // this is the test filename so always exists.
  var metadata = meta.join('~').toLowerCase().replace(/ /g, '');
  return SCREENSHOT_PATH + metadata + '_' + padLeft(FILECOUNT++) + '_';
}

module.exports.imgpath = imgpath;
module.exports.SCREENSHOT_PATH = SCREENSHOT_PATH;

And the command I use to run this is this, using the locally installed nightwatch version:

nightwatch --config nightwatch.conf.js

Hope that helps! Goodluck and good on your for testing your code.

Starting Selenium Server with Nightwatch.js

1 Answers1