Selenium RC is a test tool that allows writing automated tests in various languages against any browser. It has two parts - a server that launches browsers and acts as an HTTP proxy, and client libraries. The server runs tests and supports Firefox, IE, Safari, Opera on Windows, Mac, Linux and Solaris. Languages include Java, C#, Perl, PHP, Python and Ruby. The server can be configured via command line options to control ports, timeouts, browser selection and reuse, and proxy settings.

1. Selenium RC Overview
• Internal architecture of RC
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2. Selenium RC
•
Selenium Remote Control (RC) is a test tool
that allows testers to write automated Web
Application User Interface tests in many
programming languages against any HTTP
website using any mainstream JavaScript-
enabled browser.
• Selenium RC comes in two parts.
• A server which automatically launches and
kills browsers, and acts as a HTTP proxy for
web requests from them.
• Client libraries for computer languages. 2

3. Selenium RC Architecture
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Selenium RC
Server
Your Test Suites
written in any
supported
programming
language
Point to any
supported browser

4. Platforms Supported by Selenium RC
• Browsers
• Firefox, IE, Safari and Opera
• Operating Systems
• Windows, OS X, Linux, and Solaris
• Programming Languages
• C#, Java, Perl, PHP, Python, and Ruby
• Testing Frameworks
• Bromine, JUnit & TenstNG (Java), NUnit (.Net),
RSpec & Test::Unit (Ruby), unittest (Python)
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5. Selenium RC
• The Selenium RC Server is used for testing complex AJAX-
based web user interfaces under a Continuous Integration
system.
• Selenium RC is used with Selenium Core/Selenium IDE to
write tests in programming languages other than the
Selenese HTML table format.
• The RC server is bundled with Selenium Core and
automatically loads it into the browser.
• Without using special modes, using Selenium RC test script,
one cannot test domain changing web applications or
within the same domain to change from insecure (http)
page to secure (https) page. 5

6. RC Command Line Options
Usage: java -jar selenium-server.jar [-interactive] [-options]
• port <nnnn>:(default 4444)
• the port number the selenium server should use
• timeout <nnnn>: (eg: 180)
• an integer number of seconds
• interactive:
• Interactively enter the commands.
• multiWindow:
• Tests are executed in a separate window and supports web
pages with frames.
• forcedBrowserMode <browser>: (eg: *iehta)
• sets the forced default browser mode (e.g. "*iexplore“) for all
sessions, no matter what is passed in getNewBrowserSession
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7. RC Command Line Options
• User Extensions <file>:
• indicates a JavaScript file that will be loaded into selenium
• Browser Session Reuse:
• stops re-initialization and spawning of the browser between tests
• Avoid Proxy:
• Uses by default proxy for browser request
• set this flag to make the browser use proxy only for URLs
containing '/selenium-server'
• Firefox Profile Template <dir>:
• By default generates a fresh empty Firefox profile for every test.
• Provide a directory to use your profile directory instead.
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8. RC Command Line Options
• debug:
• Debug mode provides more trace information and used for
diagnostics purpose
• log:
• When enabled writes debug information out to a log file
• htmlSuite <browser> <startURL> <suiteFile> <resultFile>:
• Provide browser and URL to run a single HTML Selenese Test
suite and then exit immediately.
• Provide absolute path to the HTML test suite, and HTML results
file.
• proxyInjectionMode:
• A proxy injection mode is a mode where the selenium server acts as a proxy
server for all content going to the AUT. Under this mode, multiple domains
can be visited.
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9. RC Command Line Options
• The following additional flags are supported for proxy injection mode
:
• Don’t Inject Regex <regex>: an optional regular expression that
proxy injection mode can use to know when to bypass injection
• User Js Injection <file>: specifies a JavaScript file which will then
be injected into all pages
• User Content Transformation <regex> <replacement>:
• A regular expression which is matched against all test HTML content; the
second is a string which will replace matches. These flags can be used any
number of times. A simple example of how this could be useful: if you add "-
user Content Transformation https http" then all "https" strings in the HTML
of the test application will be changed to be "http".
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10. RC Command Line Options
• Java system properties:
• Dhttp.proxyHost and -Dhttp.proxyPort
• Normally Selenium RC overrides the proxy server configuration, using the
Selenium Server as a proxy. Use these options if you need to use your own
proxy together with the Selenium Server proxy.
• Use the proxy settings like this:
• java -Dhttp.proxyHost=myproxy.com -Dhttp.proxyPort=1234 -jar selenium-
server.jar
• HTTP proxy requires authentication, you will also need to set
-Dhttp.proxyUser and -Dhttp.proxyPassword, in addition to http.proxyHost
and http.proxyPort.
• java -Dhttp.proxyHost=myproxy.com -Dhttp.proxyPort=1234
-Dhttp.proxyUser=joe -Dhttp.proxyPassword=example -jar selenium-server.jar
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