Introduction to Custom Firefox Profile for Selenium
Your profile, a collection of files kept apart from the Firefox Profile for selenium Firefox program files, is where Firefox stores your personal data, including bookmarks, passwords, and user preferences. Firefox allows you to create numerous profiles, each of which has its own unique set of user data. You can add, take away from, rename, and switch between profiles with the Profile Manager. The drag and drop function in Selenium and the custom profile feature are some of the many additional functionalities that can be used.
What makes me need a new profile?
The Firefox default profile is not very conducive to automation. It is advisable to create a different profile when you wish to perform automation on a Firefox browser with reliability. The automation profile needs a particular proxy and other parameters in addition to being lightweight to perform effective tests.
For all development and test execution machines, you should utilise the same profile. The SSL certificates you accepted or the plug-ins you installed would be different if you used different profiles everywhere, which would cause the tests to run differently on the machines.
There are various situations when you need something extra in your profile to make test execution reliable. The most typical examples are browser add-ons that manage self-signed certificates or SSL certificate settings. Creating a profile that takes care of these unique test requirements, packaging it, and deploying it with the code for test execution makes a lot of sense.
Use a very minimal profile that contains only the parameters and plug-ins required for the execution. The complete profile is copied into a temporary directory each time Selenium starts a new session driving a Browser instance, which makes it both slow and unreliable if the profile is large.
Locating Your Profile Folder
Your operating system will determine where your profile folder is. This table contains two interesting items. The first is the string that comes before each profile name, xxxxxxxx. To ensure that each profile is distinct, this string is merely a collection of 8 random numbers and characters. Firefox will add a random string to any new profile for you on its own, so you never have to bother about coming up with this part of the name.
The Windows XP/2000/Vista/7 pathways are the second area of concern. The%AppData% string, which refers to your “Application Data” path, is actually a unique Windows variable. The usual format for this is:
C:Documents and Settings{User Name}Application Data.
Creating a New Profile
There are three steps involved in creating new Firefox profiles and using them in the test script. Launch the Profile Manager first, then create a new profile, and then utilise that new profile in test scripts.
Step 1: Start the Profile Manager
- Choose Exit from the File menu at the top of the Firefox window.
- Choose Run by pressing “+R” or by clicking the Windows Start Menu (bottom left button).
- Type “firefox.exe -p” into the Run dialog box, then click OK.
Note: The Profile Manager window might be opened in the background if it doesn’t appear. It must be properly closed; you can terminate the software with Ctrl+Alt+Del. You may need to specify the complete path of the Firefox program, wrapped in quotes, if it still won’t open, as in the following example:
On 32-bit Windows: “C:Program FilesMozilla Firefoxfirefox.exe” -p
On 64-bit Windows: “C:Program Files (x86)Mozilla Firefoxfirefox.exe” -p
The Choose User Profile window will look like this.
Step 2: Creating a Profile
- In the ‘Firefox – Select User Profile’ window that appears, click the ‘Create Profile…’ button.
- In the Create Profile Wizard window that appears, click “Next >”.
- In the “Enter new profile name” box, enter “profileToolsQA” and click “Complete”.
- The newly created profile will be shown in the list in the “Choose User Profile” window.
- Press the “Start Firefox” button. The new profile will launch Firefox by default.
You’ll notice that none of your bookmarks or favourite symbols are displayed in the new Firefox window.
Note: When Firefox launches the next time, the last selected profile will launch automatically. To switch between profiles, launch the Profile Manager once more.
Step 3: User Custom Profile in Selenium
It is necessary to invoke the Automation Profile in the Test scripts after it has been established.
Conclusion
The custom profile is a crucial Selenium functionality, particularly for Firefox applications. Other characteristics, such as how to scroll down in Selenium, can be used as an application.
