Question

I have been trying to access an HTTPS URL with the HTMLUnitDriver API of Selenium 2.0, but somehow the execution gets stuck at the “This Connection is Untrusted” window and and the control doesn’t return back. Following is the code I have tried working on after I got some hint from this thread:

WebDriver driver = new HtmlUnitDriver() {
    protected WebClient modifyWebClient(final WebClient client) {
        try {
            client.setUseInsecureSSL(true);
        } catch (GeneralSecurityException e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
        }
        return client;
    }
};
driver.get("https://172.25.194.91:8443/meta/homeScreen.do");

I’d highly appreciate any help to get it work .

Answer 1

The issue was something else and is resolved now: HtmlUnitDriver uses WaitingRefreshHandler without parameters and unfortunately that is inappropriate for some sites – for example, HtmlUnitDriver hangs on http://news.google.com.

Cause & Scenario:

1. You load a page, which refreshes to itself after a period of time, because of the presence of a <meta http-equiv="refresh"...> directive in your HTML header.
2. WaitingRefreshHandler waits for the time specified but after that time elapses, it again redirects HtmlUnitDriver to get that page!
3. Consequently, you loop forever in this redirection process.

Solution:

One needs to extend the HtmlUnitDriver and override the modifyWebClient method to set a new (read: to clear the) refresh handler.

@Override
protected WebClient modifyWebClient(WebClient client) {
    RefreshHandler rh = new RefreshHandler() {
        public void handleRefresh(final Page page, final URL url, final int seconds) { }
    };
    client.setRefreshHandler(rh);
    return client;
}