How to reuse the WebDriver container for all tests

[martinleim]

Question

Until now, I have run my Selenium tests against a local Chrome. To make my tests less reliant from the host system, I want to run them in a Docker container. I managed to get it working using BrowserWebDriverContainer (see Webdriver Containers) - but unfortunately only if I start a new container for each test, which slows down my test suite considerably.
Is there a way I can reuse the Chrome container for all tests?

My current setup

My test class looks similar to this:

@Testcontainers
class MyTest {
    @Container
    private BrowserWebDriverContainer<?> chrome = new BrowserWebDriverContainer<>()
        .withCapabilities(new ChromeOptions());

    @BeforeEach
    void setupSelenium() {
	    log.info("Trying to connect to remote Chrome... ");
	    final URL chromeRemoteAddress = chrome.getSeleniumAddress();
	    driver = new RemoteWebDriver(chromeRemoteAddress, new ChromeOptions());
	    driver.manage().timeouts().pageLoadTimeout(Duration.ofSeconds(30));
	    driver.manage().timeouts().implicitlyWait(Duration.ofSeconds(10));
	    log.info("Successfully connected to {}", chromeRemoteAddress);
    }

    /// ... Tests
}

Each test starts two containers selenium/standalone-chrome and testcontainers/vnc-recorder, which takes about 3 to 4 seconds:

[main] INFO org.testcontainers.containers.SeleniumUtils - Selenium API version 4.12.1 detected on classpath
[main] INFO org.testcontainers.utility.ImageNameSubstitutor - Using selenium/standalone-chrome:4.12.1 as a substitute image for selenium/standalone-chrome:4.12.1 (using image substitutor: DefaultImageNameSubstitutor (composite of 'ConfigurationFileImageNameSubstitutor' and 'PrefixingImageNameSubstitutor'))
[main] INFO tc.selenium/standalone-chrome:4.12.1 - Creating container for image: selenium/standalone-chrome:4.12.1
[main] INFO tc.selenium/standalone-chrome:4.12.1 - Container selenium/standalone-chrome:4.12.1 is starting: 14b2c0ddf051c085fb7584722ead074c1f45d4af9ff4a6d46c46c0c8558ef943
[main] INFO tc.selenium/standalone-chrome:4.12.1 - Container selenium/standalone-chrome:4.12.1 started in PT3.2083098S
[main] INFO org.testcontainers.utility.ImageNameSubstitutor - Using testcontainers/vnc-recorder:1.3.0 as a substitute image for testcontainers/vnc-recorder:1.3.0 (using image substitutor: DefaultImageNameSubstitutor (composite of 'ConfigurationFileImageNameSubstitutor' and 'PrefixingImageNameSubstitutor'))
[main] INFO tc.testcontainers/vnc-recorder:1.3.0 - Creating container for image: testcontainers/vnc-recorder:1.3.0
[main] INFO tc.testcontainers/vnc-recorder:1.3.0 - Container testcontainers/vnc-recorder:1.3.0 is starting: 28f629cdcd7e3ce168fe1ddf9843ee4bde7ed5cd61c828088845d2b54f18fca0
[main] INFO tc.testcontainers/vnc-recorder:1.3.0 - Container testcontainers/vnc-recorder:1.3.0 started in PT0.4030473S
[main] INFO MyTest - Trying to connect to remote Chrome... 
[main] INFO MyTest - Successfully connected to http://localhost:55798/wd/hub

What I tried

I tried to make the BrowserWebDriverContainer static. The first test is successfully run, but the second hangs when trying to create the WebDriver and after a while fails with a timeout:

org.openqa.selenium.SessionNotCreatedException: Could not start a new session. Possible causes are invalid address of the remote server or browser start-up failure. 
Host info: host: 'DENB7550-013', ip: '10.77.150.4'

	at org.openqa.selenium.remote.RemoteWebDriver.execute(RemoteWebDriver.java:620)
	at org.openqa.selenium.remote.RemoteWebDriver.startSession(RemoteWebDriver.java:236)
	at org.openqa.selenium.remote.RemoteWebDriver.<init>(RemoteWebDriver.java:163)
	at org.openqa.selenium.remote.RemoteWebDriver.<init>(RemoteWebDriver.java:143)
	at MyTest.setupSelenium(MyTest.java:20)
	at java.base/java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:568)
	at java.base/java.util.stream.ForEachOps$ForEachOp$OfRef.accept(ForEachOps.java:183)
	at java.base/java.util.stream.ReferencePipeline$3$1.accept(ReferencePipeline.java:197)
	at java.base/java.util.stream.ReferencePipeline$2$1.accept(ReferencePipeline.java:179)
	at java.base/java.util.stream.ReferencePipeline$3$1.accept(ReferencePipeline.java:197)
	at java.base/java.util.stream.ForEachOps$ForEachOp$OfRef.accept(ForEachOps.java:183)
	at java.base/java.util.stream.ReferencePipeline$3$1.accept(ReferencePipeline.java:197)
	at java.base/java.util.stream.ReferencePipeline$3$1.accept(ReferencePipeline.java:197)
	at java.base/java.util.stream.ReferencePipeline$3$1.accept(ReferencePipeline.java:197)
	at java.base/java.util.stream.ForEachOps$ForEachOp$OfRef.accept(ForEachOps.java:183)
	at java.base/java.util.stream.ReferencePipeline$3$1.accept(ReferencePipeline.java:197)
	at java.base/java.util.Spliterators$ArraySpliterator.forEachRemaining(Spliterators.java:992)
	at java.base/java.util.stream.AbstractPipeline.copyInto(AbstractPipeline.java:509)
	at java.base/java.util.stream.AbstractPipeline.wrapAndCopyInto(AbstractPipeline.java:499)
	at java.base/java.util.stream.ForEachOps$ForEachOp.evaluateSequential(ForEachOps.java:150)
	at java.base/java.util.stream.ForEachOps$ForEachOp$OfRef.evaluateSequential(ForEachOps.java:173)
	at java.base/java.util.stream.AbstractPipeline.evaluate(AbstractPipeline.java:234)
	at java.base/java.util.stream.ReferencePipeline.forEach(ReferencePipeline.java:596)
	at java.base/java.util.stream.ReferencePipeline$7$1.accept(ReferencePipeline.java:276)
	at java.base/java.util.stream.ReferencePipeline$3$1.accept(ReferencePipeline.java:197)
	at java.base/java.util.stream.ReferencePipeline$3$1.accept(ReferencePipeline.java:197)
	at java.base/java.util.stream.ReferencePipeline$3$1.accept(ReferencePipeline.java:197)
	at java.base/java.util.ArrayList$ArrayListSpliterator.forEachRemaining(ArrayList.java:1625)
	at java.base/java.util.stream.AbstractPipeline.copyInto(AbstractPipeline.java:509)
	at java.base/java.util.stream.AbstractPipeline.wrapAndCopyInto(AbstractPipeline.java:499)
	at java.base/java.util.stream.ForEachOps$ForEachOp.evaluateSequential(ForEachOps.java:150)
	at java.base/java.util.stream.ForEachOps$ForEachOp$OfRef.evaluateSequential(ForEachOps.java:173)
	at java.base/java.util.stream.AbstractPipeline.evaluate(AbstractPipeline.java:234)
	at java.base/java.util.stream.ReferencePipeline.forEach(ReferencePipeline.java:596)
	at java.base/java.util.stream.ReferencePipeline$7$1.accept(ReferencePipeline.java:276)
	at java.base/java.util.ArrayList$ArrayListSpliterator.forEachRemaining(ArrayList.java:1625)
	at java.base/java.util.stream.AbstractPipeline.copyInto(AbstractPipeline.java:509)
	at java.base/java.util.stream.AbstractPipeline.wrapAndCopyInto(AbstractPipeline.java:499)
	at java.base/java.util.stream.ForEachOps$ForEachOp.evaluateSequential(ForEachOps.java:150)
	at java.base/java.util.stream.ForEachOps$ForEachOp$OfRef.evaluateSequential(ForEachOps.java:173)
	at java.base/java.util.stream.AbstractPipeline.evaluate(AbstractPipeline.java:234)
	at java.base/java.util.stream.ReferencePipeline.forEach(ReferencePipeline.java:596)
	at java.base/java.util.ArrayList.forEach(ArrayList.java:1511)
	at java.base/java.util.ArrayList.forEach(ArrayList.java:1511)
	at java.base/java.util.ArrayList.forEach(ArrayList.java:1511)
Caused by: org.openqa.selenium.TimeoutException: java.util.concurrent.TimeoutException
Build info: version: '4.12.1', revision: '8e34639b11'
System info: os.name: 'Windows 10', os.arch: 'amd64', os.version: '10.0', java.version: '17'
Driver info: driver.version: RemoteWebDriver
	at org.openqa.selenium.remote.http.netty.NettyHttpHandler.makeCall(NettyHttpHandler.java:65)
	at org.openqa.selenium.remote.http.AddSeleniumUserAgent.lambda$apply$0(AddSeleniumUserAgent.java:42)
	at org.openqa.selenium.remote.http.Filter.lambda$andFinally$1(Filter.java:55)
	at org.openqa.selenium.remote.http.netty.NettyHttpHandler.execute(NettyHttpHandler.java:48)
	at org.openqa.selenium.remote.http.netty.NettyClient.execute(NettyClient.java:96)
	at org.openqa.selenium.remote.tracing.TracedHttpClient.execute(TracedHttpClient.java:54)
	at org.openqa.selenium.remote.ProtocolHandshake.createSession(ProtocolHandshake.java:115)
	at org.openqa.selenium.remote.ProtocolHandshake.createSession(ProtocolHandshake.java:96)
	at org.openqa.selenium.remote.ProtocolHandshake.createSession(ProtocolHandshake.java:68)
	at org.openqa.selenium.remote.HttpCommandExecutor.execute(HttpCommandExecutor.java:163)
	at org.openqa.selenium.remote.TracedCommandExecutor.execute(TracedCommandExecutor.java:51)
	at org.openqa.selenium.remote.RemoteWebDriver.execute(RemoteWebDriver.java:602)
	... 44 more
Caused by: java.util.concurrent.TimeoutException
	at java.base/java.util.concurrent.CompletableFuture.timedGet(CompletableFuture.java:1960)
	at java.base/java.util.concurrent.CompletableFuture.get(CompletableFuture.java:2095)
	at org.asynchttpclient.netty.NettyResponseFuture.get(NettyResponseFuture.java:206)
	at org.openqa.selenium.remote.http.netty.NettyHttpHandler.makeCall(NettyHttpHandler.java:59)
	... 55 more

See standaline-chrome.log for the log of the Chrome container.