Headless Browser Testing

 Headless Browser

a headless browser is a browser which doesn’t have a GUI. Headless browser is used to simulate programs even though there is no browser installed on your local system. You couldn’t see any browser in your system but you will get the same result in your console. Headless browser doesn’t have GUI means it’s just that it doesn’t have any GUI but the program runs in the background.

Headless browser testing using Selenium WebDriver is done to test the application without any visual interruption.

Two widely used headless drivers with practical examples.

1. HtmlUnitDriver  WebDriver driver = new HtmlUnitDriver()
2. PhantomJSDriver- WebDriver driver = new PhantomJSDriver ();

Advantages of Performing Headless Browser Testing In Selenium

1. It’s faster. The performance is better compared to browser automation. Automated testing is to automate a browser to ensure that the application is running as expected. Running regression scripts take lots of time. With headless browsers, we could save time.
2. It enables you to run the scripts on a system which doesn’t have a browser.
3. Imagine you have a situation to run some tests on a version of google chrome and there is no such version of google chrome on your local system. In this case, you could use the headless browser, most of the headless browsers support browser versions.

Disadvantages of Headless Browsers Testing:

1. Debugging is a bit difficult using headless browsers. Here browser is not visible, the only way is to capture a screenshot.