PHP's shell_exec won't allow “Watir::Browser.new :firefox” to execute

Question

I'm brand new to ruby and Watir, here's my issue...

I have a MySQL DB with test data that I need. I've done a lot in the past with this data and so I have a whole library of PHP tools for accessing this data, marking data as in use/used/bad/etc, and in general I have a lot of time invested in the PHP framework. So I'd really like to use the PHP framework as a wrapper around the Watir script - for example, use PHP to grab test user login data from the DB and pass it to the ruby script for processing.

I now have sites with javascript that need work/testing and PHP & cURL can't deal with this. So I'm working with Watir-WebDriver on Ubuntu 10.10 (Maverick, Desktop not Server) for these sites. The problem I'm having is with the use of PHP's shell_exec of the ruby script with all the Watir code.

The PHP shell_exec is executing the file - I can see it because I have some puts lines in the file which are being displayed. However, the code appears to be failing on the line

ff = Watir::Browser.new :firefox

I'm not getting an error from PHP.

The PHP line is:

echo shell_exec('ruby /var/www/watir_test.rb');

The ruby script works fine when I call it from a terminal window with the line:

ruby /var/www/watir_test.rb

I originally expected this was a permissions issue since it worked from the command line but not from a browser. However, since it can call the file well enough to return the hardcoded data I've provided for the test then ruby file permissions don't seem to be the issue. Could there be a permissions issue with opening a Firefox window from the www-data user?

When I run

ruby -d -v /var/www/watir_test.rb

I get:

{:extension=>:webdriver} {"app.update.enabled"=>"false"} {"browser.link.open_newwindow"=>"2"} {"browser.shell.checkDefaultBrowser"=>"false"} {"extensions.update.enabled"=>"false"} {"security.warn_entering_secure.show_once"=>"false"} {"webdriver_assume_untrusted_issuer"=>true} {"startup.homepage_welcome_url"=>"\"about:blank\""} {"browser.tabs.warnOnClose"=>"false"} {"extensions.update.notifyUser"=>"false"} {"toolkit.networkmanager.disable"=>"true"} {"security.warn_entering_weak.show_once"=>"false"} {"webdriver_firefox_port"=>"7055"} {"browser.download.manager.showWhenStarting"=>"false"} {"extensions.logging.enabled"=>"true"} {"network.manage-offline-status"=>"false"} {"network.http.max-connections-per-server"=>"10"} {"security.warn_submit_insecure"=>"false"} {"security.warn_entering_weak"=>"false"} {"security.warn_leaving_secure"=>"false"} {"prompts.tab_modal.enabled"=>"false"} {"security.warn_viewing_mixed.show_once"=>"false"} {"dom.max_script_run_time"=>"30"} {"webdriver_accept_untrusted_certs"=>true} {"browser.safebrowsing.enabled"=>"false"} {"security.warn_leaving_secure.show_once"=>"false"} {"signon.rememberSignons"=>"false"} {"javascript.options.showInConsole"=>"true"} {"app.update.auto"=>"false"} {"browser.EULA.3.accepted"=>"true"} {"browser.tabs.warnOnOpen"=>"false"} {"dom.disable_open_during_load"=>"false"} {"network.http.phishy-userpass-length"=>"255"} {"security.warn_entering_secure"=>"false"} {"browser.startup.homepage"=>"\"about:blank\""} {"browser.EULA.override"=>"true"} {"browser.dom.window.dump.enabled"=>"true"} {"browser.startup.page"=>"0"} {"browser.link.open_external"=>"2"} {"browser.search.update"=>"false"} {"browser.sessionstore.resume_from_crash"=>"false"} {"security.warn_viewing_mixed"=>"false"} {"dom.report_all_js_exceptions"=>"true"} {"webdriver_enable_native_events"=>false} {"devtools.errorconsole.enabled"=>"true"}

How do I get PHP to execute the shell_exec properly? The script works and my initial tests were run using firewatir (which shell_exec ran fine) but I am really wanting to use Watir-WebDriver instead of FireWatir - WatirWebDriver should be capable of running a Chrome browser (and IE on a Windows machine) while FireWatir can only run Firefox.

Thanks Gabe

Here's my "Create Browser" code:

# Include the RubyGems file
require 'rubygems'

# Include the Watir-WebDriver file. 
require 'watir-webdriver'


# Create the necessary objects
def create_browser(proxy)
    # Setup the proper Firefox Profile
    profile = Selenium::WebDriver::Firefox::Profile.new
    profile.proxy = Selenium::WebDriver::Proxy.new :http => proxy

    puts "<br>Using proxy " + proxy + "..."


    #ff=FireWatir::Firefox.new :profile => profile
    ff = Watir::Browser.new :firefox #, :profile => profile

    puts "<br>Firefox ready..."

    return ff
end

Answer 1

If the server is headless, you should install the headless gem so that Firefox can work.

require 'watir-webdriver'
require 'headless'
headless = Headless.new
headless.start
b = Watir::Browser.start 'www.google.com'
puts b.title
b.close
headless.destroy

See: http://watirwebdriver.com/headless/

Answer 2

It't a permission problem, the PHP script runs with the permissions of the server, normally apache.

You can do a sudo www and try to run the script then with rb to see if there is a problem when running ruby with the server user.

Answer 3

Put the two lines of code that is below at the very top of your PHP script. The result of this is that when you browse to your PHP page with your browser it will display exactly what the errors are, including any permission errors.

ini_set("display_errors",1); 
error_reporting(E_ALL);

Answer 4

So a recent update to Firefox killed it's support for Watir (no JSSH update if I remember). As a result I rewrote what little code I had for Selenium::WebDriver. But I'm thinking that isn't particularly relevant (its included in case it is relevant I don't know it).

My ultimate solution was to use phpseclib. This allows me to SSH into the machine via their SSH2 PHP class. Once logged in as my typical username (with typical password) I was able to fire off a headless version of my script no problem. The only real issues this creates is that I now have to view everything that's going on through log files and screenshots but that was likely to be true no matter what solution I came up with.

phpseclib needs your username and password for the server (at least until you set some form of public private key pair). So I wouldn't want to do this on a publicly available machine without a couple of layers of security - like setting .htaccess to deny read access to the file with the login data, encrypting the password stored in the file, etc. However, for my purposes I'm logging into one machine on my LAN from another machine on my LAN. The password is only good on my LAN (not my web servers) and while my LAN can see out it should not be (easily) available to the rest of the world (to the best of my knowledge). So the security concerns are minimal.

Answer 5

I never did figure this out. Headless isn't the answer to getting PHP to exec the script. I'm pretty sure it is a permissions issue with Firefox's executable but I can't be positive until I find an actual fix.

Ultimately I've had to break up the tool where PHP manages the DB and task scheduling. Then PHP creates text files with all the data necessary for ruby to run the browser to right site, login, etc, etc... Then ruby moves the data file to one of a few different folders (success, failure, bad login, etc) and adds some text to the data file. Finally PHP parses all this info in the moved text files and updates the DB with that info.

It's less than ideal but it is getting the job done. Now I just need to figure out how to run all of this with mutliple threads...

Thanks for the help