Session scoped selenium fixture

[adamdorfman]

Is there any way I could use this plugin in a session scope. The plugin has been extremely useful, I'm using it to write tests, but I don't want it to close and reopen the browser between every test. Is there any way I could use the selenium fixture in the session scope?

[elyezer]

I think it will also be valuable to have module scoped browser as well.

[dsesami]

+1 on this. I ran into an issue where I wanted to use the browser instance for a module scope and ended up with the error that i couldn't do so because the selenium fixture scope is only of a function scope, and not configurable to something wider.

[davehunt]

If you have a suggestion for implementing dynamic fixture scopes in pytest then I would be opento adding this. This has been asked for previously (see #59, which includes a somewhat outdated but still feasible workaround).

The main reasons plugin has been implemented to use a browser is for isolation. if using the same browser, one test may leave state such as cookies, cache, etc. that may affect a following test. I am not aware of a way to offer dynamic scopes for fixtures, however I do understand the desire for session and module scoped fixtures. If you have a proposal for a solution then please provide additional details.

I'll leave this issue open for now, however I do consider it a duplicate of #59.

[davehunt]

By the way, if the issue is the browser popping up frequently, I suggest running it in headless mode, inside a Docker container, or on a remote server. If the issue is the overhead in the browser startup, I suggest running your tests in parallel using pytest-xdist.