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Discussion on: What have you built/automated with headless browsers (e.g. Puppeteer)?

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scriptmunkee profile image
Ken Simeon

Hi Jonathan,

I'm currently using Headless browser sessions for all of my automated GUI testing. We run our automated GUI tests in the cloud so a dependency on a monitor is out of the question. Our automation is a combination of deployment validation, business logic verifications and multiuser role based E2E testing [with screen captures].

I am using WebdriverIO as the base framework to driver the interactions with headless Chrome.

The troubles with headless automation:
1) You loose the ability of the GPU acceleration you get from running a browser on a full desktop OS. That means that you have to code your automated tests for potential delays in returned results or page rendering.

2) Another issue I run into around resource constrains when running a headless browsers and multiple simultaneous instances. I need to spend some time profiling my automation environment to understand my breaking point.

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Arjun Attam

Hey Ken, I work with Jonathan at Microsoft, and we are curious to know more about your learnings in testing/automation. Would it be possible to take this forward over email? I'm at arjun.attam@microsoft.com

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scriptmunkee profile image
Ken Simeon

Hi Arjun,

Thanks for reaching out. I'll send you an email shortly and I look forward to chatting with you.

Cheers!
Ken