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Selenium

What is Selenium?​

Selenium is a browser automation framework. Laradock runs a Selenium WebDriver server in its own container so you can drive real browser tests (Laravel Dusk, Panther, or any WebDriver client) without installing a browser and driver stack on your host.

Start Selenium​

docker compose up -d selenium

Stop Selenium​

docker compose stop selenium

Configuration​

Selenium's only Laradock-level setting lives in selenium/defaults.env:

VariableDefaultWhat it does
SELENIUM_PORT4444Host port the Selenium WebDriver hub is published on.

The container also mounts your host's /dev/shm into the container at the same path, browsers (especially Chrome) can run out of shared memory and crash without this.

Connect a WebDriver client​

docker compose up -d selenium

Open http://localhost:4444/wd/hub to confirm the hub is up. Point your WebDriver client (Dusk, Panther, raw Selenium bindings) at that same URL. From inside another Laradock container, use http://selenium:4444/wd/hub instead of localhost.

Common issues​

  • Browser crashes mid-test with no clear error. This is almost always /dev/shm running out of space under a heavy test suite; the container already mounts the host's /dev/shm, if you're still hitting this, check available shared memory on your host.
  • Tests hang waiting for a session. Confirm the container actually started: docker compose logs selenium. A hub that never reports itself ready will leave WebDriver clients waiting indefinitely.
  • App under test can't be reached by the browser. The Selenium container needs to reach your app over the Docker network, use a container name (e.g. nginx or http://workspace) in your base test URL, not localhost, which inside the selenium container refers to itself.
  • Port already in use on your host. Change SELENIUM_PORT in .env and restart: docker compose up -d selenium.

Running Laravel Dusk? See the Dusk documentation for driving it against this hub. New to Laradock? Start at Getting Started.