Firefox in a docker container accessible from selenium in another

Question

I have a docker container running a rails app (let's call it container A) that needs to do some scraping with watir webdriver using firefox as backend.

I have firefox installed in another container (container B) and I want to be able to pass in container A something like:

Selenium::WebDriver::Firefox::Binary.path= $DOCKER_RUN_CONTAINER_A

So, each time watir launches firefox a new instance of CONTAINER_A launches a new firefox.

I know it's easy to make containers communicate using ports, but how about executables? And, by the way, does it look like a good design idea isolating firefox in a separate container?

Answer 1

Yes, this is easy to do. Just run an instance of Selenium Grid (which is a grid-node hybrid combo by default) , in the foreground on the docker server (on port 5555 or whatever). Then you can use Ruby with Selenium bindings (not WatiR) to drive the firefox browser on the remote box.