karma-webdriverio-launcher

A plugin for Karma. Launcher for Remote WebDriver instances using WebDriverIO.

Why another WebDriver launcher?

This implementation is inspired by the karma-webdriver-launcher made by the folks at Karma.

However, it uses a different WebDriver implementation (WebdriverIO instead of wd), and tries harder to get hold of a browser instance from Selenium Grid.

Installation

Not published on the NPM registry yet. For the time being, you'll need to add it to your devDependencies with its Github url, like this:

  "devDependencies": {
    "karma-webdriverio-launcher": "git://github.com/tatablack/karma-webdriverjs-launcher.git"
  }

Usage

Add a custom launcher to your Karma configuration, specifying the necessary parameters.

customLaunchers: {
    'Remote-IE9': {
        base: 'WebdriverIO',
        config: {
            host: 'qa-builder001',
            desiredCapabilities: {
                browserName: 'internet explorer',
                version: '9'
            }
        }
    }
}

And then use that launcher in your browser suite configuration.

Options

config.host

The hostname of your Selenium Grid server, or Saucelabs instance.

config.port

Unsurprisingly, the port where your Selenium Grid server is running, or your Saucelabs instance is connected to.

config.desiredCapabilities

Nothing specific here. Just have a look at Selenium documentation, and possibly WebdriverIO README. A sample configuration might thus be:

config: {
    desiredCapabilities: {                 // Sample configuration.
        browserName: 'internet explorer',  //
        platform: 'XP',                    // Check the documentation links above
        version: '9'                       // for additional capabilities.
    }                                      //
}

config.ieDocumentMode

You might want to trigger (or avoid triggering) a specific compatibility mode for IE (see MSDN for an explanation). This will actually just append a parameter to the URL being loaded through Selenium, Karma itself takes care of adding the proper META tag.

config: {
    desiredCapabilities: {
        // desired capabilities here
    },

    ieDocumentMode: 'IE=edge' // <--
}

config.loglevel

WebdriverIO can be pretty informative, but you might want to skip some of its output. The loglevel parameter is passed directly to WebdriverIO, so have a look at its documentation to determine what's the best option for you.

config: {
    desiredCapabilities: {
        // desired capabilities here
    },
    
    logLevel: 'silent',  // <-- verbose | silent | command | data | result
}