Question

I have this code for creating my web driver.
Now this code works fine if I create the driver 1 by 1.
The problem arises when creating these drivers on multiple threads.

public static WebDriver getConfiguredWebDriver(.....)
  WebDriver driver = null;
  DesiredCapabilities cap = new DesiredCapabilities();
  if(ffp != null) {
    ffp.setPreference("general.useragent.override", getRandomizedUASettings(rand, UserAgentList));
  }
  driver = new FirefoxDriver(null, ffp, cap);
  //driver = new FirefoxDriver(); also gives an error of the same kind during multithreading
  return driver;
}

It gives me this error

“Thread-4” org.openqa.selenium.WebDriverException: Failed to connect to binary FirefoxBinary(C:\Program Files (x86)\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe) on port 7057; process output follows:
null
Build info: version: ‘2.28.0’, revision: ‘18309’, time: ‘2012-12-11 20:21:45’
System info: os.name: ‘Windows 7’, os.arch: ‘amd64’, os.version: ‘6.1’, java.version: ‘1.6.0_26’

The thread code is

while(...) {
  ....... //
  FirefoxProfile ffp = new FirefoxProfile();
  DataEntryThread t = new DataEntryThread(parentFrame, lead, new ProxySettings(proxySettings), ffp, UserAgentList);
  t.start();
  ....... //
}

The error comes on any thread randomly and even the port number. What is wrong here ? How do I achieve loading multiple firefox drivers on different threads ?

Answer 1

I have found a work around for this.. just modify a part of the above code

boolean driverCreated = false;
int retryCnt = 3;
int count = 0;
while(!driverCreated && count < retryCnt) {
  try {
    driver = new FirefoxDriver(null, ffp, cap);
    driverCreated = true;
    System.out.println("Driver Created");
  } catch (Exception e) {
    retryCnt++;
  }
}
if(driverCreated == false) { return null; }

Basically, I think the driver being loaded using different threads is accessing the same binary file of firefox at the same time which gives an error but I am still unsure of it.