Sauce RC Documentation
What is Sauce RC?
Sauce RC is the Sauce Labs Selenium RC distribution. Our main motivation for creating Sauce RC is that some users found it time-consuming or confusing to install and use a command line Java application that was just delivered in a zip file.
Because of this, we made Sauce RC as user-friendly as we could. We provide a graphical installer, so that getting started is as easy as downloading and clicking through a few dialog boxes. In only a few simple steps, Sauce RC gives you a complete set up to start running Selenium tests.
Installing Sauce RC
To get started, just download Sauce RC's installer and run it. The installer will check your machine for dependencies (such as Java) and will start the installation once the prerequisites are in place.
You can optionally place a Sauce RC launcher icon on your Desktop or the quick launch bar, and you can choose whether to run the program after the installation has finished.
Using Sauce RC
Our main concern was to make Selenium easier to use. The first step was to make it possible to use Sauce RC without working with a command line. With Sauce RC, you can configure, start and stop Selenium from a graphical user interface or even your system tray.
To start or stop Sauce RC from the system tray, just right click on the icon. To work with the GUI, just click on the system tray or open http://localhost:8421 in your browser.
Note
As Sauce RC's GUI is web based, it can be accessed from any computer within the same network, just point your browser to the ip in which Sauce RC is running.
Sauce RC execution modes
The new Sauce RC has two execution modes:
- Local Mode: This mode will run your tests locally against the browsers you have installed on this machine. Sauce RC will take care of setting up clean profiles and managing browsers for you, so you can get more testing done.
- Cloud Mode: Sauce OnDemand runs your tests in our own servers so you don't have to keep up with the latest browsers, deal with configuring multiple test machines, and to the tough effort of testing your application. Sauce OnDemand also records a video of every test so you can see exactly what went wrong once it's finished.
Using Sauce RC in its cloud mode
This mode allows you to run your tests in any of the OS/browser combinations under Sauce OnDemand without making any kind of change in the tests. To use this mode, you will first need to signup for an account and get some test minutes, either by subscribing with a Credit Card or by buying some pre-paid minutes with a PayPal account.
Running Selenese tests with the new HTML Suite tab
For compatibility with Selenium RC's htmlSuite mode, Sauce RC also includes an HTML Suite tab, which gives the users the possibility to run Selenese tests using Sauce RC.
Just set all the required fields and press the "Run" button on the bottom right for the suite to start. Sauce RC will run the whole test suite locally and notify any other users though the web interface that a suite is being ran. Any user has still the possibility to kill Sauce RC while the test is running, so be careful.
Note
For Sauce RC to be able to find and run a Selenese html test, the suite html file and the tests must be available in the same computer in which Sauce RC is running. If you're accessing the web interface from a remote computer, you should first copy those files to the machine.
Configuring Sauce RC
The new Sauce RC has a web interface from which you can Start, Stop and configure both local and cloud execution modes. Every parameter or option available for both Selenium RC and Sauce OnDemand is configurable from Sauce RC's GUI, with real time validations and is remembered after restarting.
We think the use is pretty straightforward, but please let us know if you think something should be documented.
Where are the config files located
If you want to edit the config or log files by hand, or transfer them between computers, you can find them on windows in the following paths:
%APPDATA%\Sauce RC\config.json
%APPDATA%\Sauce RC\saucerc.log
For mac they are kept in:
~/.saucerc/config.json
~/.saucerc/saucerc.log
Troubleshooting
Sauce RC is refusing to start
Sauce RC could be finding the port closed, which prevents Selenium RC from starting. Try changing the port from the configuration and then starting the server again from our tray icon.
Another option is that the configuration file somehow got corrupted. In that case copy the default configuration from C:\Program Files\Sauce Labs\Sauce RC\config.json to %APPDATA%\SauceRC\config.json (these instructions are for windows).
Where is the log for a previous test run?
The logs are appended one after another. Once the log file reaches 2MB, it will start removing the oldest log lines from the beginning of the file as new lines are added to the end.
I get a "Windows Security Alert" when running Sauce RC
Sometimes, you will need to tell windows to allow Sauce RC to run.
If you see something like:
when running Sauce RC, you need to click "Unblock" to allow Sauce RC to work.
Coming in future releases
We have a lot of ideas in which we're currently working on, so expect new releases regularly.
Do you feel there's something we should add to Selenium? Is there a new feature you'd be excited to see? Please let us know! We have an idea box on our website, and we'd love to hear from you.