Opening firebug with Selenium (via firefox)

[Tony Chamberlain]

Hello

I sent out a previous message about having Selenium open firefox with firefinder.  Some how it was moved.  I have an update and a question.  Had two guys trying to figure out what was going on. Anyway, as I develop my Selenium scripts and run them and they fail I like to use firefinder/firebug to view/check xpaths, etc.  Now it is true that there are some tools written for this purpose.  They won't help me.  Here's why.  A java program (testng) reads keywords and parameters from an excel file like this:

TESTNAME  input  xpathKey  value

and there are as many lines as is necessary for the test.  TESTNAME is the name of a specific test; input it a keyword (see below), xpathKey is the xpath (see below) and value is the value to input into the xpath which is an input box for instance.

input is a keyword which refers to a big switch statement.  When input is typed it matches a keyword which calls a method called input() and passes xpathKey and value to it.  This input() method does the actual By.xpath (I forget the exact syntax), sendKeys(), etc, and returns "Pass" or "Fail".

xpathKey is defined in a properties file (e.g., key=.//*[@id='tony']).  The method (e.g. input()) does a lookup in the properties file on xpathKey and gets the actual xpath value.  Note it does not have to be named xpathKey.  It could have any name like inputNameTextBox, deceasedCheckBox (if keyword is click instead of input), or anything valid.

value is defined in a second sheet in the execl file and could be any valid value for the keyword, such as "George Washington", "123", etc.  The method (e.g. input() ) does a lookup on this definition.

What was happening is I would have an incorrect value for xpathKey.  The script would give an error and leave firefox open.  But Selenium had opened a barebones firefox with no firefinder so I could not debug.  I would have to manually open a firefox session, reset any data, and mimic what Selenium did to get to a state where I could debug.

I found the following to have Selenium open firefox with firebug, which I used:

Download the firebug xpi file from mozilla and start the profile as follows:

   File file = new File("firebug-1.8.1.xpi");
   FirefoxProfile firefoxProfile = new FirefoxProfile();
   firefoxProfile.addExtension(file);
   firefoxProfile.setPreference("extensions.firebug.currentVersion", "1.8.1"); // Avoid startup screen

   WebDriver driver = new FirefoxDriver(firefoxProfile);

which wasn't working (I modified it for the version I had, which is newer).  The "Inspect Element with Firebug" was there but selecting it did not open firebug.  I asked someone for help and when I showed him how it was not working, as you guess it worked and it opened up a firebug window.  I couldn't figure out why so I experimented and experimentd.  Turns out, if I tried to open firebug before the test had completed (Selenium was still running) it would work.  If I waited until the test finished before trying to open firebug it would not work.  If I opened firebug before the test completed, closed firebug and let the test complete, firebug would open.  I can't figure out what is going on.  I looked through the Selenium code to see somehow whether the firefox profile was being changed but couldn't find anything obvious.  Right clicking on the firebug icon showed disabled at the end of the test, but during the test sometimes showed disabled and sometimes did not.

I suppose what I could do is set one breakpoint near the end of the test and always run my scripts under debug.  Then I think firebug might work, but not if I let the test finish running it as normal testng.  By the way, by "finish" I mean come to an end.  Even if the test hits an error (no such xpath, element not clickable, etc) it will still return "Fail" and finish.

Any ideas what is going on?