Record Screen-based and Browser-based Videos in Katalon

Generating Browser-Based Videos

Katalon gives us the ability to make browser-based videos too. Similar to Screen-based videos, we can record them only for Web UI testing. This is also supported by Katalon Studio version 7.8.0 and later. Again browser-based recorded videos help us see the things that may have gone wrong in the failed tests.

Requirements

There are a few requirements for recording browser-based videos in Katalon Studio:

1. We must have a valid license for Katalon Studio Enterprise. 

2. The Katalon Version used should be 7.8.0 and later. 

Why use Browser-based recording?

We can use the browser-based recording feature to do the following things:

Recording a selected browser window: Sometimes, we might want to record a selected browser window as we might click on other open windows on the desktop while recording. This might obstruct the recording. Browser-based recording feature lets us record the screen even if it's hidden behind another window.

Record multiple browser windows: We can record more than one browser window at the same time. This can be done when we are executing Test Suite Collection parallelly.

Recording in Headless browser: We can run browsers in a Headless environment. When a visible GUI is not needed, this is commonly used for test automation and browser testing in a CI/CD pipeline.

Note: We must note that if we want to use the browser-based recording feature, we have to enable it in Katalon Studio first. Along with that, we have to install FFmpeg, which is a third-party library for video encoding.

Enable Browser-based Recorder in Katalon Studio

Now we will see how to enable the browser-based recorder in Katalon Studio.

Step 1: First, we click on Projects, and there we will click on Settings.

Step 2:  Now, we will click on Execution to go to the Execution View.

Step 3: There in the During-Execution Options panel, we will check on Record Video during execution option. This will enable the Video recorder function.

Now it is time to set a window side. We want to set a window size of 1500x1000 for our browser. Similar to the above steps, we will go to Project Settings.

Step 4: Once we are in the Project Settings, We will go to the Desired Capabilities side panel.

Step 5: Then, we select our browser. Here we have selected Firefox or Firefox Headless or Edge Chromium. 

Step 6: Finally, we click on Apply and Close.

Install FFmpeg library

We know that for browser-based videos in Katalon Studio, we have to install the FFmpeg library for video encoding. We will take a look at the steps to install this third-party library. The setup needs us to follow some different steps for different operating systems.

For Windows

Step 1: To set up FFmpeg on windows, we have to go to the official download page of FFmpeg. 

Step 2: Now we will download the package for windows.

Step 3: To our PATH environment variable, we have to add the path to the FFmpeg executable file.

Step 4: We will restart Katalon Studio for the installation of FFmpeg to take effect. 

For macOS

Setting up automatically:

We can easily install FFmpeg automatically using Homebrew. We just have to give the command 

$ brew install ffmpeg

Setting up Manually:

Step 1: To set up FFmpeg on macOS, we have to go to the official download page of FFmpeg. 

Step 2: Now, we will download the package for macOS.

Step 3: Once downloaded, we will add the path to the .../ffmpeg/bin folder to our /etc/paths file.

For Linux

Automatically:

Similar to macOS, we have the option to use commands to install FFmpeg.

We have to use the command "sudo apt-get install ffmpeg".

Manually:

Following are the steps to manually install FFmpeg in Linux.

Step 1: To set up FFmpeg on macOS, we have to go to the official download page of FFmpeg. 

Step 2: Now we will download the package for Linux

Step 3: Now, we will add the location or path to the ".../ffmpeg/bin" folder to the "/etc/environment" file.

For Docker Image

We can use Katalon Docker Image as a container to run Katalon Studio tests. We can also use it to write reports for our file system.

The FFmpeg library is not included in the Katalon Docker Image at the moment. But we can build our own image. These are the steps to follow.

Step 1: First, create a docker image with this: 

FROM katalonstudio/katalon
RUN apt-get -y update
RUN apt-get install -y ffmpeg

Step 2: Now we build our own image:

docker build -t OurCNbuild .

Step 3: After it gets built, it is time to run our docker with the Katalon:  

docker run -t --rm -v "$(pwd)":/tmp/project OurCNbuild katalonc.sh -projectPath=/tmp/project - browserType="Firefox" -retry=0 -statusDelay=15 -testSuitePath="Test Suites/TS_RegressionTest"

View Recorded Videos

After we are done with all the steps and done setting up that we discussed above, it is time to View the recorded videos. Think that we have run our test suite. After running the test suite, we will go to the Results tab.

In the results tab, we can find a list of test cases.

Each test case will have a video that has been recorded relative to it.

To play the video, we will just click on the Play icon in the Video column, and that's it. 

Frequently Asked Questions

Can I use Python and other languages in Katalon?

Katalon Recorder is a Selenium IDE-compatible browser automation testing record and playback tool. It can be used to record, debug, execute, and manage test cases, as well as export test suites to a variety of programming languages such as C#, Ruby, Java, Python, Groovy, Robot Framework, and others.

Is Katalon tough to learn?

Katalon Studio is an easy automation testing tool that does not need sophisticated programming knowledge to develop automated tests. It also has a scripting mode for users who are more advanced and for test cases.

Where do Katalon recorder files get saved?

Examine the user folder in Katalon Studio. There should be a folder called Reports in the project folder. Users should be able to find all of the execution reports there.

Conclusion

In the article, we read about Recording Screen-based and Browser-based Videos in Katalon. We found out the steps and things to do both options in simple ways. It is something really handy to help us find our errors in cases while using Katalon. Refer to our courses and explore Coding Ninjas Studio to find more exciting stuff. You can also look into the interview experiences and solve different problems. Look into our Guided paths, test series, libraries and resources to know more.

Happy Coding!