How to Handle SSL Certificate Issue In Java Selenium Program?

When we try to open manually a URL on our system browser that time the browser already imported the required certificate that’s why we are not getting any error but when we try to open the same URL with selenium webdriver that time Selenium webdriver creates a fresh profile for each run and as the profile doesn’t have the SSL certificate so when you try to open using WebDriver you are getting this error screen.

What is an SSL Certificate?

SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) is a standard security protocol which is used to establish an encrypted connection between the server and client which is a browser.

What is the untrusted certificate?

When you try to access a site which has the security certificate installed that time the certificate will help to determine whether the site you are visiting is the site that it claims to be. If there is any problem in the certificate then that time you will get an alert message or screen saying ‘This Connection Is Untrusted’.

Types of SSL Certificate Error:

• Firefox: This connection is untrusted.
• Google Chrome: This site security is not trusted.
• Internet Explorer: This security certificate presented by this website was not trusted by a trusted certificate authority (CA).

How to Handle SSL Certificate Error In Firefox?

As we have mentioned that sometimes the firefox profile doesn’t have the certificate that’s why we are getting the SSL: certificate error. SO to resolve this issue we can create a Firefox profile manually and after that, we can use the same profile with our selenium webdriver. So to resolve this follow the below steps:

• Create a firefox Profile
• Set the setAcceptUntrustedCertificates() method as true and setAssumeUntrustedCertificateIssuer() method to false

Selenium Automation Script For Firefox:

import org.openqa.selenium.WebDriver;
import org.openqa.selenium.firefox.FirefoxDriver;
import org.openqa.selenium.firefox.FirefoxProfile;
public class SSLCertificate
{
   public static void main(String[] args)
   {
      //It create firefox profile
      FirefoxProfile profile=new FirefoxProfile();
      // This will set the true value
      profile.setAcceptUntrustedCertificates(true);
      // This will open firefox browser using above created profile
      WebDriver driver=new FirefoxDriver(profile);
      driver.get("pass the url as per your requirement");
   }
}

By following the above step you can access the URL without any certificate issue.

How to Handle SSL Certificate Error In Chrome & IE?

Above we have seen how we can fix the certificate issues for firefox browser and now we are going to see how we can fix such issues in chrome & IE browser also. In Firefox browser we have taken help of firefox profile but for chrome & IE browser we need to take the help of Desired capabilities to get and accept the SSL certificate error on run time.

Steps for Chrome Browser:

• Create An object for Desiredcpabilities class
• Set the ACCEPT_SSL_CERTS as true
• Open the chrome browser with the capability

// Create object of DesiredCapabilities class
DesiredCapabilities cap=DesiredCapabilities.chrome();

// Set ACCEPT_SSL_CERTS variable to true
cap.setCapability(CapabilityType.ACCEPT_SSL_CERTS, true);


// Set the driver path
System.setProperty("webdriver.chrome.driver","Chrome driver path");


// Open browser with capability
WebDriver driver=new ChromeDriver(cap);

Steps for IE Browser:

Like the Chrome browser, we need to follow the same process to handle the certificate issue for IE browser.

// Create object of DesiredCapabilities class
DesiredCapabilities cap=DesiredCapabilities.internetExplorer();

// Set ACCEPT_SSL_CERTS variable to true
cap.setCapability(CapabilityType.ACCEPT_SSL_CERTS, true);

// Set the driver path
System.setProperty("webdriver.ie.driver","IE driver path");

// Open browser with capability
WebDriver driver=newInternetExplorerDriver(cap);

package com.selenium.basics;
import org.openqa.selenium.WebDriver;
import org.openqa.selenium.firefox.FirefoxDriver;
import org.openqa.selenium.remote.CapabilityType;
import org.openqa.selenium.remote.DesiredCapabilities;
public class SSLCertificateIssue 
{
   public static void main(String[] args) 
   {
      DesiredCapabilities cap=new DesiredCapabilities();
      cap.setCapability(CapabilityType.ACCEPT_SSL_CERTS, true);
      WebDriver driver=new FirefoxDriver();
      driver.get("http://www.cacert.org/");
      driver.close();
   }
}

Read Also: Handle Tooltip Java Selenium