Launching Selenium server automatically

It is troublesome to ensure that the Selenium server is running before running a page test. To solve the problem, you can ask Wicket Page Test to launch the Selenium server automatically if it is not already running. To do that, create a wpt.properties in your home folder (e.g., C:\Documents and Settings\kent in XP or C:\Users\kent in Vista/Win7) with content like: 

selenium.server.jar=C:\selenium-remote-control-1.0.1\selenium-server-1.0.1\selenium-server.jar

This assumes that you have installed the Selenium RC directly into C:\. If you put it into somewhere else, adjust the path above.

Make sure java.exe is on your PATH.

Now, run the test as usual. If Selenium server is not running, it will be launched.

Note that, however, at the end, the Selenium server will NOT be shut down by default. The idea is that it should stay there for any subsequent tests. However, if you're running the tests, say, in a nightly build, you may probably want to shut it down at the end (if it was launched by Wicket Page Test). To do that, just set an option in the configuration: 

public class TestFixture {
        @BeforeSuite
        public void setUp() throws Exception {
                Configuration cfg = new Configuration();
                cfg.setKillSeleniumAtEnd(true);
                ...
                WebPageTestContext.beforePageTests(cfg);
        }

        @AfterSuite
        public void tearDown() throws Exception {
                WebPageTestContext.afterPageTests();
        }
}

Issue in Windows

In Windows if you run the test suite in Eclipse and the Seleninum server is launched by Wicket Page Test but it is not killed at the end, Eclipse will fail to detect the termination of the test process and thus the red button in the Console window will still be on. It is harmless. You can click the red button to have Eclipse kill the test process (which doesn't really exist). Or you can leave it on and there is no harm either.

If this troubles you, you can use setKillSeleniumAtEnd() method mentioned above. Then Eclipse will detect the termination properly.