Capturing URL while Selenium Tests run

Question

i am automating using selenium webdriver and C#. Is there a way to capture all urls that my browser navigates to while my Selenium automation tests run using an external tool such as Fiddler core / wireshark. I mean while my tests continue to run, I would like some of these tools to capture my urls parallely so that incase my tests fail, i could investigate further by using the final few urls(from the point of failure) to debug the issue.

Is this really possible. Do I need to use a separate thread to one of these tools(Fiddler/wireshark/any other tool) to capture the url?

Can this really be done

Answer 1

There are a few options.

1. Start wireshark (or fiddler) before your Selenium test kicks off. You can do this with a batch file that gets executed in your test setup.
2. You can utilize a browser plugin for fiddler. IE has one, I'm not sure if there is a comparible plugin for all browsers though. Then you can get Selenium to activate this through the browser...assuming fiddler keeps in the browser window and not open a separate non-browser window that Selenium can't see.UPDATE: Fiddler plugins don't stay in the browser window so this option won't work.
3. Write some wrapper code that does a driver.Url and stores it into a list. This wrapper code would check to see if the driver.Url is different from the last stored entry in the object and if it is different then it would add it to the list.

All have pros and cons. 3 would give you the most control as your test itself would gather the URL's and maintain a list in code that you can do what you want with. 1 of course would give you the most robust details, depending on how you setup wireshark, and you can profile the entire machine and network experience. 2 is a middle ground where your test still drives it, but the results are separate...but being part of the browser you would have to avoid cleanup after your tests...if you have more tests than one execute at a time this could cause alot of problems...