How to Handle HTTPS and Security Popups in Selenium RC

Now a days many web applications switching from HTTP to HTTPS for giving the security assurance to the users to share their password and Credit card information safely with the site.

To ensure HTTPS site is genuine the browser should have a security certificate. Otherwise, when the browser access the Application Under Test using HTTPS. It will assume that application is not trusted. When this occurs the browser will display security popups and these popups can not be closed by selenium RC.

Solution:

By changing the rum mode we can handle this, In selenium RC 1.0 beta 2.0 and later use *firefox or *iexplore for the run mode. In earlier versions, Including selenium RC 1.0 beta 1, use *chrome or *iehta, for the run mode. Using these run modes, we don't need to install any special certificate.

In version 1.0 the run modes *firefox or *iexplore are recommended. There are additional run modes of *iexploreproxy and *firefoxproxy these are provided only for backward compatibility.

In Earlier versions of selenium RC, *Chrome or *iehta were the run modes that supported HTTPS and the handling of security popups. These were considered 'experimental' modes although they became quite stable and many used them. If you are using Selenium 1.0 you do not need and should not use these older run modes.

Security Certificates: 

Normally, browser will trust the application you are testing by installing a security certificate which

you already own. You can check this in your browser’s options or internet properties. When Selenium loads your browser it injects code to intercept messages between the browser and the server. The browser now thinks untrusted

Software is trying to look like your application. It responds by alerting you with popup messages.

To get around this, Selenium-RC, (again when using a run mode that support this) will install its own

security certificate, temporarily, to your client machine in a place where the browser can access it. This

tricks the browser into thinking it’s accessing a site different from your AUT and effectively suppresses

the popups.

Another method used with earlier versions of Selenium was to install the Cybervillians security certificate provided with Selenium installation. Most users should no longer need to do this however, if

you are running Selenium-RC in proxy injection mode, you may need to explicitly install this security

certificate.