How to Run Selenium Tests on Firefox using Firefox Driver

Selenium uses Firefox Driver to link the test cases with the Firefox browser. In this guide, we discuss how Selenium Firefox driver aka GeckoDriver works with the help of an example.

Before proceeding further, learn how to execute Selenium test cases with Selenium Java Guide.

Let’s get started.

What is a Selenium Firefox Driver?

Selenium Firefox Driver, also called GeckoDriver is a browser engine developed by Mozilla for many applications. It provides a link between test cases and the Firefox browser. Without the help of GeckoDriver, one cannot instantiate the object of Firefox browser and perform automated Selenium testing. One can easily initialize the object of GeckoDriver using the following command:

Basic Setup:

Step 1: Navigate to the official Selenium website. Under third-party drivers, one will find all the drivers. Just click on the Mozilla GeckoDriver documentation

Step 2: After that, check the latest supported platforms of GeckoDriver versions in the documentation and click on GeckoDriver releases .

Now, it will navigate to the GeckoDriver downloads link, where one can download the suitable driver based on the OS as it is platform agnostic. The snapshot below depicts all the available Selenium Firefox Driver releases.

Step 3: Once the zip file is downloaded, open it to retrieve the geckodriver executable file.

Step 4: Copy the path of the GeckoDriver and set the properties to launch the browser and perform testing.

Also learn : How to run Selenium Tests on IE using Selenium IE Driver.

Sample test case: We will perform 3 simple steps:

1. Launch Firefox browser
2. Go to Google website
3. Enter search query as - BrowserStack Guide.

import java.util.concurrent.TimeUnit;
import org.openqa.selenium.By;
import org.openqa.selenium.WebDriver;
import org.openqa.selenium.WebElement;
import org.openqa.selenium.firefox.FirefoxDriver;
public class Firefox_Example{
public static void main(String[] args) {
System.setProperty("webdriver.gecko.driver",Path_of_Firefox_Driver"); // Setting system properties of FirefoxDriver
WebDriver driver = new FirefoxDriver(); //Creating an object of FirefoxDriver
driver.manage().window().maximize();
driver.manage().deleteAllCookies();
driver.manage().timeouts().pageLoadTimeout(40, TimeUnit.SECONDS);
driver.manage().timeouts().implicitlyWait(30, TimeUnit.SECONDS);
driver.get("https://www.google.com/");
driver.findElement(By.name("q")).sendKeys("Browserstack Guide"); //name locator for text box
WebElement searchbutton = driver.findElement(By.name("btnK"));//name locator for google search
searchbutton.click();
driver.quit();
}
}

On executing the code, GeckoDriver will launch Firefox browser, navigate through google.com and give the search result of the Browserstack Guide page as shown below.

For user willing to automate test cases on Chrome, they can refer to this article Automation using Selenium ChromeDriver.