Unable to establish a connection with the SafariDriver extension

Question

I have been running e2e tests in an AngularJS web-app using protractor, testing on Chrome and Firefox. When adding safari to my array, the following is displayed:

"Unable to establish a connection with the SafariDriver extension"

I have found a way to solve this locally but as we are using Codeship to automate our builds, I need a way to solve it rather than having to manually add the driver to selenium and enable in Safari.

I am using selenium 2.43.1

config:

    exports.config = {
  baseUrl: 'http://localhost:9001',
  multiCapabilities: [{
    'browserName': 'chrome'
  }, {
    'browserName': 'firefox'
  }, {
    'browserName': 'safari'
  }],
  specs: ['e2e/app.js']
};

package.json:

    {
  "name": "livingthevalues",
  "version": "0.0.0",
  "dependencies": {
    "express": "^4.9.7",
    "gzippo": "^0.2.0",
    "bower": "^1.3.8",
    "grunt": "^0.4.5",
    "grunt-cli": "^0.1.13",
    "grunt-autoprefixer": "^0.7.3",
    "grunt-concurrent": "^0.5.0",
    "grunt-contrib-clean": "^0.5.0",
    "grunt-contrib-compass": "^0.7.2",
    "grunt-contrib-concat": "^0.4.0",
    "grunt-contrib-connect": "^0.7.1",
    "grunt-contrib-copy": "^0.5.0",
    "grunt-contrib-cssmin": "^0.9.0",
    "grunt-contrib-htmlmin": "^0.3.0",
    "grunt-contrib-imagemin": "^0.8.1",
    "grunt-contrib-jshint": "^0.10.0",
    "grunt-contrib-uglify": "^0.4.0",
    "grunt-contrib-watch": "^0.6.1",
    "grunt-filerev": "^0.2.1",
    "grunt-google-cdn": "^0.4.0",
    "grunt-newer": "^0.7.0",
    "grunt-ng-annotate": "^0.3.0",
    "grunt-svgmin": "^0.4.0",
    "grunt-usemin": "^2.1.1",
    "grunt-wiredep": "^1.7.0",
    "jshint-stylish": "^0.2.0",
    "load-grunt-tasks": "^0.4.0",
    "time-grunt": "^0.3.1"
  },
  "devDependencies": {
    "chai": "^1.9.2",
    "chai-as-promised": "^4.1.1",
    "cucumber": "^0.4.4",
    "grunt-karma": "^0.9.0",
    "grunt-protractor-runner": "^1.1.4",
    "karma": "^0.12.17",
    "karma-chrome-launcher": "^0.1.4",
    "karma-jasmine": "^0.1.5",
    "karma-junit-reporter": "^0.2.2",
    "karma-mocha": "^0.1.6",
    "karma-phantomjs-launcher": "^0.1.4",
    "protractor": "^1.3.1",
    "protractor-cucumber": "^0.1.2",
    "sinon": "^1.11.0"
  },
  "engines": {
    "node": ">=0.10.0"
  },
  "scripts": {
    "test": "grunt test",
    "pree2e": "./node_modules/protractor/bin/webdriver-manager update",
    "e2e": "grunt test:e2e"
  }
}

commands run by ci:

Exporting Environment
0 min 2 sec
git clone --branch 'commentBox' --depth 50 git@github.com:MyTeam/myrepo.git ~/src/github.com/MyTeam/myrepo
0 min 1 sec
cd clone
0 min 1 sec
git checkout -qf 2ec65e3b32971d0f7f9de948c40f019f0629adea
0 min 1 sec
Preparing Dependency Cache
0 min 10 sec
Preparing Virtual Machine
0 min 5 sec
rvm use 2.0.0-p195
0 min 5 sec
bundle install
0 min 2 sec
nvm install 0.10.25
0 min 2 sec
nvm use 0.10.25
0 min 1 sec
npm install
0 min 7 sec
bower instal
0 min 7 sec
npm test
0 min 10 sec
npm run e2e

Thanks - seems like such a simple thing to do but can't understand why it isn't working.

Answer 1

On Mac, The Selenium SafariDriver extension you used to have to install is now depreciated. On El Capitan & Sierra Apple provides it's own Safaridriver. Uninstall previous safaridriver extension (if you had installed it) and enable the new safaridriver, excerpt from link 2:

• Ensure that the Develop menu is available. It can be turned on by opening Safari preferences (Safari > Preferences in the menu bar), going to the Advanced tab, and ensuring that the Show Develop menu in menu bar checkbox is checked.
• Enable Remote Automation in the Develop menu. This is toggled via Develop > Allow Remote Automation in the menu bar.
• Authorize safaridriver to launch the webdriverd service which hosts the local web server. To permit this, run /usr/bin/safaridriver once manually and complete the authentication prompt. e.g. in terminal: /usr/bin/safaridriver -p 8000

Also, You need to be running Selenium 3.0 + (support started at 3.0.0-beta1) to use the new safari driver.

Note: If you still have trouble maybe check the Addendum at bottom of the 2nd link. Another caveats I ran into, the new safaridriver only supports one session so maxSessions=# is no longer supported. Also, if you use npm selenium-standalone install you can update selenium version like so.

selenium-standalone install --version=3.0.1 --baseURL=https://selenium-release.storage.googleapis.com

And then boot hubs and nodes with the --version=3.0.1 flag.

Answer 2

I'm using Windows 7.
Prerequisite: Install Safari on Windows

1. Go to http://docs.seleniumhq.org/download/
2. Scroll down -> Go to the section "SafariDriver" and download "SafariDriver.safariextz"
3. Double click on "SafariDriver.safariextz" (previously downloaded)
4. Safari would open with a pop up containing "Install" button -> Click Install button
5. Now go to Preferences of Safari and you would see WebDriver (in my case WebDriver 2.48.0) is installed (Enable WebDriver checkbox is checked))

6. It's now time to instantiate SafariDriver and get the desired URL as below:

   WebDriver driver = new SafariDriver();
   driver.get("https://www.packtpub.com/web-development/mastering-selenium-testing-tools-video");

Answer 3

I'm wrestling with this exact issue trying to automate our tests against Safari 7.1. My research so far leads me to believe that with Safari 7.1, a new security model was put into place to make extensions more secure. Here is a related thread fwiw. I have tried using the mvn command line to install the SafariDriver extension but it fails to do so. I've tried running a simple command line to open Safari with the extension as a parameter but then you are prompted to enable/install it. (no good for unattended flows). Another hack that was suggested was to go directly to the plist file that Safari uses for preferences/extensions but I could not find it on Mac 10.10. I'm quite anxious to know the answer here.