Changing domain linked to a Selenium::Client::Driver instance

Question

I'm using the Selenium Client (v 1.2.18) to do automated navigation of retail websites for which there exists no external API. My goal is to determine real-time, site-specific product availability using the "Check Availability" button that exists on a lot of these sites.

In case there's any concern, each of these checks will be initiated by a real live consumer who is actually interested in whether or not something's available at that store. There will be no superfluous requests or other internet badness.

I'm using Selenium's Grid framework so that I can run stuff in parallel and I'm keeping each of the controlled browsers open between requests. The issue I'm experiencing is that I need to perform these checks across a number of different domains, and I won't know in advance which one I will have to check next. I didn't think this would be too big an issue, but it turns out that when a Selenium browser instance gets made, it gets linked to a specific domain and I haven't been able to find any way to change what domain that is. This requires restarting a browser each time a request comes in for a domain we're not already linked to.

Oh, and the reason we're using Selenium instead something more light-weight (eg. Mechanize) is because we need something that can handle JavaScript.

Any help on this would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

I suppose you are restricted from changing domain because of same origin policy. Did you try using browser with elevated security privileges like iehta for internet explorer and chrome for firefox browsers. While using these modes of browsers, use open method in your tests and pass the URL which you want to open. This might solve your problem.