Edge automation with Selenium - Credential required constantly

When automating Microsoft Edge with Selenium, you may encounter situations where the browser constantly prompts for credentials, especially when accessing sites that require authentication. This behavior is expected as Selenium operates in a separate process and does not have direct access to the browser's authentication tokens. To handle this scenario, you can try the following approaches:

1. Use WebDriver options: When creating an instance of the Edge WebDriver, you can set specific options to provide authentication credentials. Here's an example using Python:

   pythonCopy code
   from selenium import webdriver
   
   
   
   options = webdriver.EdgeOptions()
   
   options.add_argument("--auth-server-whitelist=<domain_name>")
   
   options.add_argument("--auth-negotiate-delegate-whitelist=<domain_name>")
   
   options.add_argument("--auth-schemes=<auth_scheme>")
   
   
   
   # Replace <domain_name> with the domain you want to authenticate against
   
   # Replace <auth_scheme> with the authentication scheme (e.g., 'ntlm', 'basic')
   
   
   
   driver = webdriver.Edge(options=options)
   
   

   The --auth-server-whitelist and --auth-negotiate-delegate-whitelist options specify the domains for which the browser should automatically provide credentials. The --auth-schemes option sets the preferred authentication schemes.

2. Use a browser profile: You can create a custom browser profile for Edge that includes saved credentials for the specific sites requiring authentication. Selenium can then utilize this profile during automation. Here's an example using Python:

   pythonCopy code
   from selenium import webdriver
   
   
   
   profile = webdriver.EdgeProfile('<path_to_profile_directory>')
   
   
   
   # Replace <path_to_profile_directory> with the path to your custom browser profile
   
   
   
   driver = webdriver.Edge(profile)
   
   

   In this approach, you need to manually create a browser profile in Edge, save the necessary credentials, and provide the path to the profile directory.

It's important to note that the above approaches may not work in all scenarios, especially if the website uses complex authentication mechanisms or if the credentials are managed by external systems (such as Single Sign-On solutions). In such cases, you may need to explore alternative solutions like using explicit login procedures within your test script or leveraging additional libraries or tools specific to the authentication mechanism.

Make sure to adjust the code examples to match your specific programming language and environment.