Selenium lets you automate browsers on remote computers if
there is a Selenium Grid running on them. The computer that
executes the code is referred to as the client computer, and the computer with the browser and driver is
referred to as the remote computer or sometimes as an end-node.
To direct Selenium tests to the remote computer, you need to use a Remote WebDriver class
and pass the URL including the port of the grid on that machine. Please see the grid documentation
for all the various ways the grid can be configured.
Basic Example
The driver needs to know where to send commands to and which browser to start on the Remote computer. So an address
and an options instance are both required.
Uploading a file is more complicated for Remote WebDriver sessions because the file you want to
upload is likely on the computer executing the code, but the driver on the
remote computer is looking for the provided path on its local file system.
The solution is to use a Local File Detector. When one is set, Selenium will bundle
the file, and send it to the remote machine, so the driver can see the reference to it.
Some bindings include a basic local file detector by default, and all of them allow
for a custom file detector.
Java does not include a Local File Detector by default, so you must always add one to do uploads.
Chrome, Edge and Firefox each allow you to set the location of the download directory.
When you do this on a remote computer, though, the location is on the remote computer’s local file system.
Selenium allows you to enable downloads to get these files onto the client computer.
Enable Downloads in the Grid
Regardless of the client, when starting the grid in node or standalone mode,
you must add the flag:
--enable-managed-downloads true
Enable Downloads in the Client
The grid uses the se:downloadsEnabled capability to toggle whether to be responsible for managing the browser location.
Each of the bindings have a method in the options class to set this.
Be aware that Selenium is not waiting for files to finish downloading,
so the list is an immediate snapshot of what file names are currently in the directory for the given session.
Each browser has implemented special functionality that is available only to that browser.
Each of the Selenium bindings has implemented a different way to use those features in a Remote Session
Java requires you to use the Augmenter class, which allows it to automatically pull in implementations for
all interfaces that match the capabilities used with the RemoteWebDriver