It provides extensions to emulate user interaction with browsers, a distribution server for scaling browser allocation, and the infrastructure for implementations of the W3C WebDriver specification that lets you write interchangeable code for all major web browsers.

This project is made possible by volunteer contributors who have put in thousands of hours of their own time, and made the source code freely available for anyone to use, enjoy, and improve.

Selenium brings together browser vendors, engineers, and enthusiasts to further an open discussion around automation of the web platform. The project organises an annual conference to teach and nurture the community.

At the core of Selenium is WebDriver, an interface to write instruction sets that can be run interchangeably in many browsers. Once you’ve installed everything, only a few lines of code get you inside a browser. You can find a more comprehensive example in Writing your first Selenium script

package dev.selenium.hello;

import org.openqa.selenium.WebDriver;
import org.openqa.selenium.chrome.ChromeDriver;

public class HelloSelenium {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        WebDriver driver = new ChromeDriver();

        driver.get("https://selenium.dev");

        driver.quit();
    }
}

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from selenium import webdriver


driver = webdriver.Chrome()

driver.get("http://selenium.dev")

driver.quit()

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using OpenQA.Selenium.Chrome;

namespace SeleniumDocs.Hello
{
    public class HelloSelenium
    {
        public static void Main()
        {
            var driver = new ChromeDriver();
            
            driver.Navigate().GoToUrl("https://selenium.dev");
            
            driver.Quit();
        }
    }
}

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require 'selenium-webdriver'

driver = Selenium::WebDriver.for :chrome

driver.get 'https://selenium.dev'

driver.quit

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const {Builder} = require('selenium-webdriver');
require("chromedriver");

(async function helloSelenium() {
    let driver = await new Builder().forBrowser('chrome').build();

    await driver.get('https://selenium.dev');

    await driver.quit();
})();

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package dev.selenium.hello

import org.openqa.selenium.chrome.ChromeDriver

fun main() {
    val driver = ChromeDriver()

    driver.get("https://selenium.dev")

    driver.quit()
}

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See the Overview to check the different project components and decide if Selenium is the right tool for you.

You should continue on to Getting Started to understand how you can install Selenium and successfully use it as a test automation tool, and scaling simple tests like this to run in large, distributed environments on multiple browsers, on several different operating systems.

1 - Selenium Overview

Is Selenium for you? See an overview of the different project components.

Selenium is not just one tool or API but it composes many tools.

WebDriver

If you are beginning with desktop website or mobile website test automation, then you are going to be using WebDriver APIs. WebDriver uses browser automation APIs provided by browser vendors to control the browser and run tests. This is as if a real user is operating the browser. Since WebDriver does not require its API to be compiled with application code; It is not intrusive. Hence, you are testing the same application which you push live.

IDE

IDE (Integrated Development Environment) is the tool you use to develop your Selenium test cases. It’s an easy-to-use Chrome and Firefox extension and is generally the most efficient way to develop test cases. It records the users’ actions in the browser for you, using existing Selenium commands, with parameters defined by the context of that element. This is not only a time-saver but also an excellent way of learning Selenium script syntax.

Grid

Selenium Grid allows you to run test cases in different machines across different platforms. The control of triggering the test cases is on the local end, and when the test cases are triggered, they are automatically executed by the remote end.

After the development of the WebDriver tests, you may face the need to run your tests on multiple browsers and operating system combinations. This is where Grid comes into the picture.

1.1 - Selenium components

Building a test suite using WebDriver will require you to understand and effectively use several components. As with everything in software, different people use different terms for the same idea. Below is a breakdown of how terms are used in this description.

Terminology

API: Application Programming Interface. This is the set of “commands” you use to manipulate WebDriver.
Library: A code module that contains the APIs and the code necessary to implement them. Libraries are specific to each language binding, eg .jar files for Java, .dll files for .NET, etc.
Driver: Responsible for controlling the actual browser. Most drivers are created by the browser vendors themselves. Drivers are generally executable modules that run on the system with the browser itself, not the system executing the test suite. (Although those may be the same system.) NOTE: Some people refer to the drivers as proxies.
Framework: An additional library that is used as a support for WebDriver suites. These frameworks may be test frameworks such as JUnit or NUnit. They may also be frameworks supporting natural language features such as Cucumber or Robotium. Frameworks may also be written and used for tasks such as manipulating or configuring the system under test, data creation, test oracles, etc.

The Parts and Pieces

At its minimum, WebDriver talks to a browser through a driver. Communication is two-way: WebDriver passes commands to the browser through the driver, and receives information back via the same route.

The driver is specific to the browser, such as ChromeDriver for Google’s Chrome/Chromium, GeckoDriver for Mozilla’s Firefox, etc. The driver runs on the same system as the browser. This may or may not be the same system where the tests themselves are executed.

This simple example above is direct communication. Communication to the browser may also be remote communication through Selenium Server or RemoteWebDriver. RemoteWebDriver runs on the same system as the driver and the browser.

Remote communication can also take place using Selenium Server or Selenium Grid, both of which in turn talk to the driver on the host system

Where Frameworks fit in

WebDriver has one job and one job only: communicate with the browser via any of the methods above. WebDriver does not know a thing about testing: it does not know how to compare things, assert pass or fail, and it certainly does not know a thing about reporting or Given/When/Then grammar.

This is where various frameworks come into play. At a minimum, you will need a test framework that matches the language bindings, e.g., NUnit for .NET, JUnit for Java, RSpec for Ruby, etc.

The test framework is responsible for running and executing your WebDriver and related steps in your tests. As such, you can think of it looking akin to the following image.

Natural language frameworks/tools such as Cucumber may exist as part of that Test Framework box in the figure above, or they may wrap the Test Framework entirely in their custom implementation.

1.2 - A deeper look at Selenium

Selenium is an umbrella project for a range of tools and libraries that enable and support the automation of web browsers.

Selenium controls web browsers

Selenium is many things but at its core, it is a toolset for web browser automation that uses the best techniques available to remotely control browser instances and emulate a user’s interaction with the browser.

Selenium allows users to simulate common activities performed by end-users; entering text into fields, selecting drop-down values and checking boxes, and clicking links in documents. It also provides many other controls such as mouse movement, arbitrary JavaScript execution, and much more.

Although used primarily for front-end testing of websites, Selenium is, at its core, a browser user agent library. The interfaces are ubiquitous to their application, encouraging composition with other libraries to suit your purpose.

One interface to rule them all

One of the project’s guiding principles is to support a common interface for all (major) browser technologies. Web browsers are incredibly complex, highly engineered applications, performing their operations in entirely different ways but which frequently look the same while doing so. Even though the text is rendered in the same fonts, the images are displayed in the same place , and the links take you to the same destination. What is happening underneath is as different as night and day. Selenium “abstracts” these differences, hiding their details and intricacies from the person writing the code. This allows you to write several lines of code to perform a complicated workflow, but these same lines will execute on Firefox, Internet Explorer, Chrome, and all other supported browsers.

Tools and support

Selenium’s minimalist design approach gives it the versatility to be included as a component in bigger applications. The surrounding infrastructure provided under the Selenium umbrella gives you the tools to put together your grid of browsers so tests can be run on different browsers and multiple operating systems across a range of machines.

Imagine a bank of computers in your server room or data center all firing up browsers at the same time hitting your site’s links, forms, and tables—testing your application 24 hours a day. Through the simple programming interface provided for the most common languages, these tests will run tirelessly in parallel, reporting back to you when errors occur.

It is an aim to help make this a reality for you, by providing users with tools and documentation to not only control browsers but to make it easy to scale and deploy such grids.

Who uses Selenium

Many of the most important companies in the world have adopted Selenium for their browser-based testing, often replacing years-long efforts involving other proprietary tools. As it has grown in popularity, so have its requirements and challenges multiplied.

As the web becomes more complicated and new technologies are added to websites, it’s the mission of this project to keep up with them where possible. Being an open-source project, this support is provided through the generous donation of time from many volunteers, every one of which has a “day job.”

Another mission of the project is to encourage more volunteers to partake in this effort, and build a strong community so that the project can continue to keep up with emerging technologies and remain a dominant platform for functional test automation.

2 - WebDriver

WebDriver drives a browser natively, learn more about it.

WebDriver drives a browser natively, as a user would, either locally or on a remote machine using the Selenium server, marks a leap forward in terms of browser automation.

Selenium WebDriver refers to both the language bindings and the implementations of the individual browser controlling code. This is commonly referred to as just WebDriver.

Selenium WebDriver is a W3C Recommendation

WebDriver is designed as a simple and more concise programming interface.
WebDriver is a compact object-oriented API.
It drives the browser effectively.

2.1 - Getting started

If you are new to Selenium, we have a few resources that can help you get up to speed right away.

Selenium supports automation of all the major browsers in the market through the use of WebDriver. WebDriver is an API and protocol that defines a language-neutral interface for controlling the behaviour of web browsers. Each browser is backed by a specific WebDriver implementation, called a driver. The driver is the component responsible for delegating down to the browser, and handles communication to and from Selenium and the browser.

This separation is part of a conscious effort to have browser vendors take responsibility for the implementation for their browsers. Selenium makes use of these third party drivers where possible, but also provides its own drivers maintained by the project for the cases when this is not a reality.

The Selenium framework ties all of these pieces together through a user-facing interface that enables the different browser backends to be used transparently, enabling cross-browser and cross-platform automation.

Selenium setup is quite different from the setup of other commercial tools. Before you can start writing Selenium code, you have to install the language bindings libraries for your language of choice, the browser you want to use, and the driver for that browser.

Follow the links below to get up and going with Selenium WebDriver.

If you wish to start with a low-code/record and playback tool, please check Selenium IDE

Once you get things working, if you want to scale up your tests, check out the Selenium Grid.

2.1.1 - Install a Selenium library

Setting up the Selenium library for your favourite programming language.

First you need to install the Selenium bindings for your automation project. The installation process for libraries depends on the language you choose to use. Make sure you check the Selenium downloads page to make sure you are using the latest version.

Requirements by language

View the minimum supported Java version here.

Installation of Selenium libraries for Java is accomplished using a build tool.

Maven

Specify the dependency in the project’s pom.xml file:

        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.seleniumhq.selenium</groupId>
            <artifactId>selenium-java</artifactId>
            <version>4.6.0</version>
        </dependency>

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Gradle

Specify the dependency in the project build.gradle file as testImplementation:

    testImplementation 'org.seleniumhq.selenium:selenium-java:4.6.0'

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The minimum supported Python version for each Selenium version can be found in Supported Python Versions on PyPi

There are a couple different ways to install Selenium.

Pip

pip install selenium

Download

Alternatively you can download the PyPI source archive (selenium-x.x.x.tar.gz) and install it using setup.py:

python setup.py install

Require in project

To use it in a project, add it to the requirements.txt file:

selenium==4.6.0

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A list of all supported frameworks for each version of Selenium is available on Nuget

There are a few options for installing Selenium.

Packet Manager

Install-Package Selenium.WebDriver

.NET CLI

dotnet add package Selenium.WebDriver

CSProj

in the project’s csproj file, specify the dependency as a PackageReference in ItemGroup:

      <PackageReference Include="Selenium.WebDriver" Version="4.6.0" />

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Additional considerations

Further items of note for using Visual Studio Code (vscode) and C#

Install the compatible .NET SDK as per the section above. Also install the vscode extensions (Ctrl-Shift-X) for C# and NuGet. Follow the instruction here to create and run the “Hello World” console project using C#. You may also create a NUnit starter project using the command line dotnet new NUnit. Make sure the file %appdata%\NuGet\nuget.config is configured properly as some developers reported that it will be empty due to some issues. If nuget.config is empty, or not configured properly, then .NET builds will fail for Selenium Projects. Add the following section to the file nuget.config if it is empty:

<configuration>
  <packageSources>
    <add key="nuget.org" value="https://api.nuget.org/v3/index.json" protocolVersion="3" />
    <add key="nuget.org" value="https://www.nuget.org/api/v2/" />   
  </packageSources>
...

For more info about nuget.config click here. You may have to customize nuget.config to meet you needs.

Now, go back to vscode, press Ctrl-Shift-P, and type “NuGet Add Package”, and enter the required Selenium packages such as Selenium.WebDriver. Press Enter and select the version. Now you can use the examples in the documentation related to C# with vscode.

You can see the minimum required version of Ruby for any given Selenium version on rubygems.org

Selenium can be installed two different ways.

Install manually

gem install selenium-webdriver

Add to project’s gemfile

gem 'selenium-webdriver', '= 4.6.1'

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You can find the minimum required version of Node for any given version of Selenium in the Node Support Policy section on npmjs

Selenium is typically installed using npm.

Install locally

npm install selenium-webdriver

Add to project

In your project’s package.json, add requirement to dependencies:

        "selenium-webdriver": "^4.5.0"

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Use the Java bindings for Kotlin.

Next Step

Install the browser drivers

2.1.2 - Install browser drivers

Setting up your system to allow a browser to be automated.

Through WebDriver, Selenium supports all major browsers on the market such as Chrome/Chromium, Firefox, Internet Explorer, Edge, and Safari. Where possible, WebDriver drives the browser using the browser’s built-in support for automation.

Since all the driver implementations except for Internet Explorer are provided by the browser vendors themselves, they are not included in the standard Selenium distribution. This section explains the basic requirements for getting started with the different browsers.

Read about more advanced options for starting a driver in our driver configuration documentation.

Four Ways to Use Drivers

1. Selenium Manager (Beta)

Selenium v4.6

Selenium Manager helps you to get a working environment to run Selenium out of the box. Beta 1 of Selenium Manager will configure the drivers for Chrome, Firefox, and Edge if they are not found on the PATH. No extra configuration is needed. Future releases of Selenium Manager will eventually even download browsers if necessary.

Read more at the blog announcement for Selenium Manager .

2. Driver Management Software

Most machines automatically update the browser, but the driver does not. To make sure you get the correct driver for your browser, there are many third party libraries to assist you.

Import WebDriverManager

import io.github.bonigarcia.wdm.WebDriverManager;

Call setup():

        WebDriverManager.chromedriver().setup();

        WebDriver driver = new ChromeDriver();

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Import WebDriver Manager for Python

from webdriver_manager.chrome import ChromeDriverManager

Use install() to get the location used by the manager and pass it to the driver in a service class instance:

    service = ChromeService(executable_path=ChromeDriverManager().install())

    driver = webdriver.Chrome(service=service)

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Important: This package does not currently work for IEDriverServer v4+

Import WebDriver Manager Package

using WebDriverManager;
using WebDriverManager.DriverConfigs.Impl;

Use the SetUpDriver() which requires a config class:

            new DriverManager().SetUpDriver(new ChromeConfig());

            var driver = new ChromeDriver();

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Add webdrivers gem to Gemfile:

gem 'webdrivers', '~> 5.0'

Require webdrivers in your project:

    require 'webdrivers'

    @driver = Selenium::WebDriver.for :chrome

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There is not a recommended driver manager for JavaScript at this time

Import WebDriver Manager

import io.github.bonigarcia.wdm.WebDriverManager;

Call the setup method before initializing the driver as you normally would:

fun chrome(): WebDriver {
    WebDriverManager.chromedriver().setup()
    return ChromeDriver()
}

3. The `PATH` Environment Variable

This option first requires manually downloading the driver (See Quick Reference Section for links).

This is a flexible option to change location of drivers without having to update your code, and will work on multiple machines without requiring that each machine put the drivers in the same place.

You can either place the drivers in a directory that is already listed in PATH, or you can place them in a directory and add it to PATH.

To see what directories are already on PATH, open a Terminal and execute:

echo $PATH

If the location to your driver is not already in a directory listed, you can add a new directory to PATH:

echo 'export PATH=$PATH:/path/to/driver' >> ~/.bash_profile
source ~/.bash_profile

You can test if it has been added correctly by starting the driver:

chromedriver

To see what directories are already on PATH, open a Terminal and execute:

echo $PATH

If the location to your driver is not already in a directory listed, you can add a new directory to PATH:

echo 'export PATH=$PATH:/path/to/driver' >> ~/.zshenv
source ~/.zshenv

You can test if it has been added correctly by starting the driver:

chromedriver

To see what directories are already on PATH, open a Command Prompt and execute:

echo %PATH%

If the location to your driver is not already in a directory listed, you can add a new directory to PATH:

setx PATH "%PATH%;C:\WebDriver\bin"

You can test if it has been added correctly by starting the driver:

chromedriver.exe

If your PATH is configured correctly above, you will see some output relating to the startup of the driver:

Starting ChromeDriver 95.0.4638.54 (d31a821ec901f68d0d34ccdbaea45b4c86ce543e-refs/branch-heads/4638@{#871}) on port 9515
Only local connections are allowed.
Please see https://chromedriver.chromium.org/security-considerations for suggestions on keeping ChromeDriver safe.
ChromeDriver was started successfully.

You can regain control of your command prompt by pressing Ctrl+C

4. Hard Coded Location

Similar to Option 3 above, you need to manually download the driver (See Quick Reference Section for links). Specifying the location in the code itself has the advantage of not needing to figure out Environment Variables on your system, but has the drawback of making the code much less flexible.

System.setProperty("webdriver.chrome.driver","/path/to/chromedriver");
ChromeDriver driver = new ChromeDriver();

from selenium.webdriver.chrome.service import Service
from selenium import webdriver

service = Service(executable_path="/path/to/chromedriver")
driver = webdriver.Chrome(service=service)

var driver = new ChromeDriver(@"C:\WebDriver\bin");

service = Selenium::WebDriver::Service.chrome(path: '/path/to/chromedriver')
driver = Selenium::WebDriver.for :chrome, service: service

const {Builder} = require('selenium-webdriver');
const chrome = require('selenium-webdriver/chrome');

const service = new chrome.ServiceBuilder('/path/to/chromedriver');
const driver = new Builder().forBrowser('chrome').setChromeService(service).build();

import org.openqa.selenium.chrome.ChromeDriver

fun main(args: Array<String>) {
    System.setProperty("webdriver.chrome.driver", "/path/to/chromedriver")
    val driver = ChromeDriver()
}

Quick Reference

Browser	Supported OS	Maintained by	Download	Issue Tracker
Chromium/Chrome	Windows/macOS/Linux	Google	Downloads	Issues
Firefox	Windows/macOS/Linux	Mozilla	Downloads	Issues
Edge	Windows/macOS/Linux	Microsoft	Downloads	Issues
Internet Explorer	Windows	Selenium Project	Downloads	Issues
Safari	macOS High Sierra and newer	Apple	Built in	Issues

Note: The Opera driver no longer works with the latest functionality of Selenium and is currently officially unsupported.

Next Step

Create your first Selenium script

2.1.3 - Write your first Selenium script

Step-by-step instructions for constructing a Selenium script

Once you have Selenium installed and Drivers installed, you’re ready to write Selenium code.

Eight Basic Components

Everything Selenium does is send the browser commands to do something or send requests for information. Most of what you’ll do with Selenium is a combination of these basic commands:

1. Start the session

For more details on starting a session read our documentation on driver sessions

        WebDriver driver = new ChromeDriver();

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    driver = webdriver.Chrome()

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            IWebDriver driver = new ChromeDriver();

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    driver = Selenium::WebDriver.for :chrome

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            driver = await new Builder().forBrowser('chrome').build();

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        driver = ChromeDriver()

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2. Take action on browser

In this example we are navigating to a web page.

        driver.get("https://www.selenium.dev/selenium/web/web-form.html");

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    driver.get("https://www.selenium.dev/selenium/web/web-form.html")

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            driver.Navigate().GoToUrl("https://www.selenium.dev/selenium/web/web-form.html");

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    driver.get('https://www.selenium.dev/selenium/web/web-form.html')

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            await driver.get('https://www.selenium.dev/selenium/web/web-form.html');

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        driver.get("https://www.selenium.dev/selenium/web/web-form.html")

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3. Request browser information

There are a bunch of types of information about the browser you can request, including window handles, browser size / position, cookies, alerts, etc.

        String title = driver.getTitle();

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    title = driver.title

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            var title = driver.Title;

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    title = driver.title

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            let title = await driver.getTitle();

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        val title = driver.title

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4. Establish Waiting Strategy

Synchronizing the code with the current state of the browser is one of the biggest challenges with Selenium, and doing it well is an advanced topic.

Essentially you want to make sure that the element is on the page before you attempt to locate it and the element is in an interactable state before you attempt to interact with it.

An implicit wait is rarely the best solution, but it’s the easiest to demonstrate here, so we’ll use it as a placeholder.

5. Find an element

The majority of commands in most Selenium sessions are element related, and you can’t interact with one without first finding an element

        WebElement textBox = driver.findElement(By.name("my-text"));
        WebElement submitButton = driver.findElement(By.cssSelector("button"));

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    text_box = driver.find_element(by=By.NAME, value="my-text")
    submit_button = driver.find_element(by=By.CSS_SELECTOR, value="button")

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            var textBox = driver.FindElement(By.Name("my-text"));
            var submitButton = driver.FindElement(By.TagName("button"));

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    text_box = driver.find_element(name: 'my-text')
    submit_button = driver.find_element(tag_name: 'button')

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            let textBox = await driver.findElement(By.name('my-text'));
            let submitButton = await driver.findElement(By.css('button'));

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        var textBox = driver.findElement(By.name("my-text"))
        val submitButton = driver.findElement(By.cssSelector("button"))

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6. Take action on element

There are only a handful of actions to take on an element, but you will use them frequently.

        textBox.sendKeys("Selenium");
        submitButton.click();

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    text_box.send_keys("Selenium")
    submit_button.click()

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            textBox.SendKeys("Selenium");
            submitButton.Click();

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    text_box.send_keys('Selenium')
    submit_button.click

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            await textBox.sendKeys('Selenium');
            await submitButton.click();

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        textBox.sendKeys("Selenium")
        submitButton.click()

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7. Request element information

Elements store a lot of information that can be requested.

        String value = message.getText();

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    value = message.text

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            var value = message.Text;

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    value = message.text

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            let value = await message.getText();

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        val value = message.getText()

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8. End the session

This ends the driver process, which by default closes the browser as well. No more commands can be sent to this driver instance.

        driver.quit();

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    driver.quit()

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            driver.Quit();

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    driver.quit

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        after(async () => await driver.quit());

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        driver.quit()

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Putting everything together

Let’s combine these 8 things into a complete script with assertions that can be executed by a test runner.

package dev.selenium.getting_started;

import org.junit.jupiter.api.Test;
import org.openqa.selenium.By;
import org.openqa.selenium.WebDriver;
import org.openqa.selenium.WebElement;
import org.openqa.selenium.chrome.ChromeDriver;

import java.time.Duration;

import static org.junit.jupiter.api.Assertions.assertEquals;

public class FirstScriptTest {

    @Test
    public void eightComponents() {
        WebDriver driver = new ChromeDriver();
        driver.get("https://www.selenium.dev/selenium/web/web-form.html");

        String title = driver.getTitle();
        assertEquals("Web form", title);

        driver.manage().timeouts().implicitlyWait(Duration.ofMillis(500));

        WebElement textBox = driver.findElement(By.name("my-text"));
        WebElement submitButton = driver.findElement(By.cssSelector("button"));

        textBox.sendKeys("Selenium");
        submitButton.click();

        WebElement message = driver.findElement(By.id("message"));
        String value = message.getText();
        assertEquals("Received!", value);

        driver.quit();
    }

}

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from selenium import webdriver
from selenium.webdriver.common.by import By


def test_eight_components():
    driver = webdriver.Chrome()

    driver.get("https://www.selenium.dev/selenium/web/web-form.html")

    title = driver.title
    assert title == "Web form"

    driver.implicitly_wait(0.5)

    text_box = driver.find_element(by=By.NAME, value="my-text")
    submit_button = driver.find_element(by=By.CSS_SELECTOR, value="button")

    text_box.send_keys("Selenium")
    submit_button.click()

    message = driver.find_element(by=By.ID, value="message")
    value = message.text
    assert value == "Received!"

    driver.quit()

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using System;
using Microsoft.VisualStudio.TestTools.UnitTesting;
using OpenQA.Selenium;
using OpenQA.Selenium.Chrome;

namespace SeleniumDocs.GettingStarted
{
    [TestClass]
    public class FirstScriptTest
    {

        [TestMethod]
        public void ChromeSession()
        {
            IWebDriver driver = new ChromeDriver();

            driver.Navigate().GoToUrl("https://www.selenium.dev/selenium/web/web-form.html");

            var title = driver.Title;
            Assert.AreEqual("Web form", title);

            driver.Manage().Timeouts().ImplicitWait = TimeSpan.FromMilliseconds(500);

            var textBox = driver.FindElement(By.Name("my-text"));
            var submitButton = driver.FindElement(By.TagName("button"));
            
            textBox.SendKeys("Selenium");
            submitButton.Click();
            
            var message = driver.FindElement(By.Id("message"));
            var value = message.Text;
            Assert.AreEqual("Received!", value);
            
            driver.Quit();
        }
    }
}

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# frozen_string_literal: true

require 'spec_helper'

RSpec.describe 'First Script' do
  it 'uses eight components' do
    driver = Selenium::WebDriver.for :chrome

    driver.get('https://www.selenium.dev/selenium/web/web-form.html')

    title = driver.title
    expect(title).to eq('Web form')

    driver.manage.timeouts.implicit_wait = 500

    text_box = driver.find_element(name: 'my-text')
    submit_button = driver.find_element(tag_name: 'button')

    text_box.send_keys('Selenium')
    submit_button.click

    message = driver.find_element(id: 'message')
    value = message.text
    expect(value).to eq('Received!')

    driver.quit
  end
end

Check code on GitHub

const { By, Builder } = require('selenium-webdriver');
const { suite } = require('selenium-webdriver/testing');
const assert = require("assert");

suite(function(env) {
    describe('First script', function() {
        let driver;

        before(async function() {
            driver = await new Builder().forBrowser('chrome').build();
        });

        after(async () => await driver.quit());

        it('First Selenium script', async function() {
            await driver.get('https://www.selenium.dev/selenium/web/web-form.html');

            let title = await driver.getTitle();
            assert.equal("Web form", title);

            await driver.manage().setTimeouts({ implicit: 500 });

            let textBox = await driver.findElement(By.name('my-text'));
            let submitButton = await driver.findElement(By.css('button'));

            await textBox.sendKeys('Selenium');
            await submitButton.click();

            let message = await driver.findElement(By.id('message'));
            let value = await message.getText();
            assert.equal("Received!", value);
        });

    });
});

Check code on GitHub

package dev.selenium.getting_started

import io.github.bonigarcia.wdm.WebDriverManager
import org.junit.jupiter.api.*
import org.junit.jupiter.api.Assertions.assertEquals
import org.openqa.selenium.By
import org.openqa.selenium.WebDriver
import org.openqa.selenium.chrome.ChromeDriver
import java.time.Duration

@TestInstance(TestInstance.Lifecycle.PER_CLASS)
class FirstScriptTest {
    private lateinit var driver: WebDriver

    @BeforeAll
    fun setupAll() {
        WebDriverManager.chromedriver().setup()
    }

    @BeforeEach
    fun setup() {
        driver = ChromeDriver()
    }

    @AfterEach
    fun teardown() {
        driver.quit()
    }

    @Test
    fun eightComponents() {
        driver.get("https://www.selenium.dev/selenium/web/web-form.html")

        val title = driver.title
        assertEquals("Web form", title)

        driver.manage().timeouts().implicitlyWait(Duration.ofMillis(500))

        var textBox = driver.findElement(By.name("my-text"))
        val submitButton = driver.findElement(By.cssSelector("button"))

        textBox.sendKeys("Selenium")
        submitButton.click()

        val message = driver.findElement(By.id("message"))
        val value = message.getText()
        assertEquals("Received!", value)
    }

}

Check code on GitHub

Test Runners

If you are using Selenium for testing, you will want to execute your Selenium code using test runner tools.

Many of the code examples in this documentation can be found in our example repositories. There are multiple options in each language, but here is what we are using in our examples:

// Add instructions

Install Mocha Test runner using below command in your terminal

npm install mocha

and run your tests using below command

mocha firstScript.spec.js

// Add instructions

Next Steps

Take what you’ve learned and build out your Selenium code.

As you find more functionality that you need, read up on the rest of our WebDriver documentation.

2.1.4 - Upgrade to Selenium 4

Are you still using Selenium 3? This guide will help you upgrade to the latest release!

Upgrading to Selenium 4 should be a painless process if you are using one of the officially supported languages (Ruby, JavaScript, C#, Python, and Java). There might be some cases where a few issues can happen, and this guide will help you to sort them out. We will go through the steps to upgrade your project dependencies and understand the major deprecations and changes the version upgrade brings.

These are the steps we will follow to upgrade to Selenium 4:

Preparing our test code
Upgrading dependencies
Potential errors and deprecation messages

Note: while Selenium 3.x versions were being developed, support for the W3C WebDriver standard was implemented. Both this new protocol and the legacy JSON Wire Protocol were supported. Around version 3.11, Selenium code became compliant with the level W3C 1 specification. The W3C compliant code in the latest version of Selenium 3 will work as expected in Selenium 4.

Preparing our test code

Selenium 4 removes support for the legacy protocol and uses the W3C WebDriver standard by default under the hood. For most things, this implementation will not affect end users. The major exceptions are Capabilities and the Actions class.

Capabilities

If the test capabilities are not structured to be W3C compliant, may cause a session to not be started. Here is the list of W3C WebDriver standard capabilities:

browserName
browserVersion (replaces version)
platformName (replaces platform)
acceptInsecureCerts
pageLoadStrategy
proxy
timeouts
unhandledPromptBehavior

An up-to-date list of standard capabilities can be found at W3C WebDriver.

Any capability that is not contained in the list above, needs to include a vendor prefix. This applies to browser specific capabilities as well as cloud vendor specific capabilities. For example, if your cloud vendor uses build and name capabilities for your tests, you need to wrap them in a cloud:options block (check with your cloud vendor for the appropriate prefix).

Before

DesiredCapabilities caps = DesiredCapabilities.firefox();
caps.setCapability("platform", "Windows 10");
caps.setCapability("version", "92");
caps.setCapability("build", myTestBuild);
caps.setCapability("name", myTestName);
WebDriver driver = new RemoteWebDriver(new URL(cloudUrl), caps);

caps = {};
caps['browserName'] = 'Firefox';
caps['platform'] = 'Windows 10';
caps['version'] = '92';
caps['build'] = myTestBuild;
caps['name'] = myTestName;

DesiredCapabilities caps = new DesiredCapabilities();
caps.SetCapability("browserName", "firefox");
caps.SetCapability("platform", "Windows 10");
caps.SetCapability("version", "92");
caps.SetCapability("build", myTestBuild);
caps.SetCapability("name", myTestName);
var driver = new RemoteWebDriver(new Uri(CloudURL), caps);

caps = Selenium::WebDriver::Remote::Capabilities.firefox
caps[:platform] = 'Windows 10'
caps[:version] = '92'
caps[:build] = my_test_build
caps[:name] = my_test_name
driver = Selenium::WebDriver.for :remote, url: cloud_url, desired_capabilities: caps

caps = {}
caps['browserName'] = 'firefox'
caps['platform'] = 'Windows 10'
caps['version'] = '92'
caps['build'] = my_test_build
caps['name'] = my_test_name
driver = webdriver.Remote(cloud_url, desired_capabilities=caps)

After

FirefoxOptions browserOptions = new FirefoxOptions();
browserOptions.setPlatformName("Windows 10");
browserOptions.setBrowserVersion("92");
Map<String, Object> cloudOptions = new HashMap<>();
cloudOptions.put("build", myTestBuild);
cloudOptions.put("name", myTestName);
browserOptions.setCapability("cloud:options", cloudOptions);
WebDriver driver = new RemoteWebDriver(new URL(cloudUrl), browserOptions);

capabilities = {
  browserName: 'firefox',
  browserVersion: '92',
  platformName: 'Windows 10',
  'cloud:options': {
     build: myTestBuild,
     name: myTestName,
  }
}

var browserOptions = new FirefoxOptions();
browserOptions.PlatformName = "Windows 10";
browserOptions.BrowserVersion = "92";
var cloudOptions = new Dictionary<string, object>();
cloudOptions.Add("build", myTestBuild);
cloudOptions.Add("name", myTestName);
browserOptions.AddAdditionalOption("cloud:options", cloudOptions);
var driver = new RemoteWebDriver(new Uri(CloudURL), browserOptions);

options = Selenium::WebDriver::Options.firefox
options.browser_version = 'latest'
options.platform_name = 'Windows 10'
cloud_options = {}
cloud_options[:build] = my_test_build
cloud_options[:name] = my_test_name
options.add_option('cloud:options', cloud_options)
driver = Selenium::WebDriver.for :remote, url: cloud_url, capabilities: options

from selenium.webdriver.firefox.options import Options as FirefoxOptions
options = FirefoxOptions()
options.browser_version = '92'
options.platform_name = 'Windows 10'
cloud_options = {}
cloud_options['build'] = my_test_build
cloud_options['name'] = my_test_name
options.set_capability('cloud:options', cloud_options)
driver = webdriver.Remote(cloud_url, options=options)

Find element(s) utility methods in Java

The utility methods to find elements in the Java bindings (FindsBy interfaces) have been removed as they were meant for internal use only. The following code samples explain this better.

Finding a single element with findElement*

Before

driver.findElementByClassName("className");
driver.findElementByCssSelector(".className");
driver.findElementById("elementId");
driver.findElementByLinkText("linkText");
driver.findElementByName("elementName");
driver.findElementByPartialLinkText("partialText");
driver.findElementByTagName("elementTagName");
driver.findElementByXPath("xPath");

After

driver.findElement(By.className("className"));
driver.findElement(By.cssSelector(".className"));
driver.findElement(By.id("elementId"));
driver.findElement(By.linkText("linkText"));
driver.findElement(By.name("elementName"));
driver.findElement(By.partialLinkText("partialText"));
driver.findElement(By.tagName("elementTagName"));
driver.findElement(By.xpath("xPath"));

Finding a multiple elements with findElements*

Before

driver.findElementsByClassName("className");
driver.findElementsByCssSelector(".className");
driver.findElementsById("elementId");
driver.findElementsByLinkText("linkText");
driver.findElementsByName("elementName");
driver.findElementsByPartialLinkText("partialText");
driver.findElementsByTagName("elementTagName");
driver.findElementsByXPath("xPath");

After

driver.findElements(By.className("className"));
driver.findElements(By.cssSelector(".className"));
driver.findElements(By.id("elementId"));
driver.findElements(By.linkText("linkText"));
driver.findElements(By.name("elementName"));
driver.findElements(By.partialLinkText("partialText"));
driver.findElements(By.tagName("elementTagName"));
driver.findElements(By.xpath("xPath"));

Upgrading dependencies

Check the subsections below to install Selenium 4 and have your project dependencies upgraded.

Java

The process of upgrading Selenium depends on which build tool is being used. We will cover the most common ones for Java, which are Maven and Gradle. The minimum Java version required is still 8.

Maven

Before

<dependencies>
  <!-- more dependencies ... -->
  <dependency>
    <groupId>org.seleniumhq.selenium</groupId>
    <artifactId>selenium-java</artifactId>
    <version>3.141.59</version>
  </dependency>
  <!-- more dependencies ... -->
</dependencies>

After

<dependencies>
    <!-- more dependencies ... -->
    <dependency>
        <groupId>org.seleniumhq.selenium</groupId>
        <artifactId>selenium-java</artifactId>
        <version>4.4.0</version>
    </dependency>
    <!-- more dependencies ... -->
</dependencies>

After making the change, you could execute mvn clean compile on the same directory where the pom.xml file is.

Gradle

Before

plugins {
    id 'java'
}
group 'org.example'
version '1.0-SNAPSHOT'
repositories {
    mavenCentral()
}
dependencies {
    testImplementation 'org.junit.jupiter:junit-jupiter-api:5.7.0'
    testRuntimeOnly 'org.junit.jupiter:junit-jupiter-engine:5.7.0'
    implementation group: 'org.seleniumhq.selenium', name: 'selenium-java', version: '3.141.59'
}
test {
    useJUnitPlatform()
}

After

plugins {
    id 'java'
}
group 'org.example'
version '1.0-SNAPSHOT'
repositories {
    mavenCentral()
}
dependencies {
    testImplementation 'org.junit.jupiter:junit-jupiter-api:5.7.0'
    testRuntimeOnly 'org.junit.jupiter:junit-jupiter-engine:5.7.0'
    implementation group: 'org.seleniumhq.selenium', name: 'selenium-java', version: '4.4.0'
}
test {
    useJUnitPlatform()
}

After making the change, you could execute ./gradlew clean build on the same directory where the build.gradle file is.

To check all the Java releases, you can head to MVNRepository.

C#

The place to get updates for Selenium 4 in C# is NuGet. Under the Selenium.WebDriver package you can get the instructions to update to the latest version. Inside of Visual Studio, through the NuGet Package Manager you can execute:

PM> Install-Package Selenium.WebDriver -Version 4.4.0

Python

The most important change to use Python is the minimum required version. Selenium 4 will require a minimum Python 3.7 or higher. More details can be found at the Python Package Index. To upgrade from the command line, you can execute:

pip install selenium==4.4.3

Ruby

The update details for Selenium 4 can be seen at the selenium-webdriver gem in RubyGems. To install the latest version, you can execute:

gem install selenium-webdriver

To add it to your Gemfile:

gem 'selenium-webdriver', '~> 4.4.0'

JavaScript

The selenium-webdriver package can be found at the Node package manager, npmjs. Selenium 4 can be found here. To install it, you could either execute:

npm install selenium-webdriver

Or, update your package.json and run npm install:

{
  "name": "selenium-tests",
  "version": "1.0.0",
  "dependencies": {
    "selenium-webdriver": "^4.4.0"
  }
}

Potential errors and deprecation messages

Here is a set of code examples that will help to overcome the deprecation messages you might encounter after upgrading to Selenium 4.

Java

Waits and Timeout

The parameters received in Timeout have switched from expecting (long time, TimeUnit unit) to expect (Duration duration).

Before

driver.manage().timeouts().implicitlyWait(10, TimeUnit.SECONDS);
driver.manage().timeouts().setScriptTimeout(2, TimeUnit.MINUTES);
driver.manage().timeouts().pageLoadTimeout(10, TimeUnit.SECONDS);

After

driver.manage().timeouts().implicitlyWait(Duration.ofSeconds(10));
driver.manage().timeouts().scriptTimeout(Duration.ofMinutes(2));
driver.manage().timeouts().pageLoadTimeout(Duration.ofSeconds(10));

Waits are also expecting different parameters now. WebDriverWait is now expecting a Duration instead of a long for timeout in seconds and milliseconds. The withTimeout and pollingEvery utility methods from FluentWait have switched from expecting (long time, TimeUnit unit) to expect (Duration duration).

Before

new WebDriverWait(driver, 3)
.until(ExpectedConditions.elementToBeClickable(By.cssSelector("#id")));

Wait<WebDriver> wait = new FluentWait<WebDriver>(driver)
  .withTimeout(30, TimeUnit.SECONDS)
  .pollingEvery(5, TimeUnit.SECONDS)
  .ignoring(NoSuchElementException.class);

After

new WebDriverWait(driver, Duration.ofSeconds(3))
  .until(ExpectedConditions.elementToBeClickable(By.cssSelector("#id")));

  Wait<WebDriver> wait = new FluentWait<WebDriver>(driver)
  .withTimeout(Duration.ofSeconds(30))
  .pollingEvery(Duration.ofSeconds(5))
  .ignoring(NoSuchElementException.class);

Merging capabilities is no longer changing the calling object

It was possible to merge a different set of capabilities into another set, and it was mutating the calling object. Now, the result of the merge operation needs to be assigned.

Before

MutableCapabilities capabilities = new MutableCapabilities();
capabilities.setCapability("platformVersion", "Windows 10");
FirefoxOptions options = new FirefoxOptions();
options.setHeadless(true);
options.merge(capabilities);

As a result, the options object was getting modified.

After

MutableCapabilities capabilities = new MutableCapabilities();
capabilities.setCapability("platformVersion", "Windows 10");
FirefoxOptions options = new FirefoxOptions();
options.setHeadless(true);
options = options.merge(capabilities);

The result of the merge call needs to be assigned to an object.

Firefox Legacy

Before GeckoDriver was around, the Selenium project had a driver implementation to automate Firefox (version <48). However, this implementation is not needed anymore as it does not work in recent versions of Firefox. To avoid major issues when upgrading to Selenium 4, the setLegacy option will be shown as deprecated. The recommendation is to stop using the old implementation and rely only on GeckoDriver. The following code will show the setLegacy line deprecated after upgrading.

FirefoxOptions options = new FirefoxOptions();
options.setLegacy(true);

`BrowserType`

The BrowserType interface has been around for a long time, however it is getting deprecated in favour of the new Browser interface.

Before

MutableCapabilities capabilities = new MutableCapabilities();
capabilities.setCapability("browserVersion", "92");
capabilities.setCapability("browserName", BrowserType.FIREFOX);

After

MutableCapabilities capabilities = new MutableCapabilities();
capabilities.setCapability("browserVersion", "92");
capabilities.setCapability("browserName", Browser.FIREFOX);

C#

`AddAdditionalCapability` is deprecated

Instead of it, AddAdditionalOption is recommended. Here is an example showing this:

Before

var browserOptions = new ChromeOptions();
browserOptions.PlatformName = "Windows 10";
browserOptions.BrowserVersion = "latest";
var cloudOptions = new Dictionary<string, object>();
browserOptions.AddAdditionalCapability("cloud:options", cloudOptions, true);

After

var browserOptions = new ChromeOptions();
browserOptions.PlatformName = "Windows 10";
browserOptions.BrowserVersion = "latest";
var cloudOptions = new Dictionary<string, object>();
browserOptions.AddAdditionalOption("cloud:options", cloudOptions);

Python

`executable_path has been deprecated, please pass in a Service object`

In Selenium 4, you’ll need to set the driver’s executable_path from a Service object to prevent deprecation warnings. (Or don’t set the path and instead make sure that the driver you need is on the System PATH.)

Before

from selenium import webdriver
options = webdriver.ChromeOptions()
options.add_experimental_option("excludeSwitches", ["enable-automation"])
options.add_experimental_option("useAutomationExtension", False)
driver = webdriver.Chrome(executable_path=CHROMEDRIVER_PATH, options=options)

After

from selenium import webdriver
from selenium.webdriver.chrome.service import Service as ChromeService
options = webdriver.ChromeOptions()
options.add_experimental_option("excludeSwitches", ["enable-automation"])
options.add_experimental_option("useAutomationExtension", False)
service = ChromeService(executable_path=CHROMEDRIVER_PATH)
driver = webdriver.Chrome(service=service, options=options)

Summary

We went through the major changes to be taken into consideration when upgrading to Selenium 4. Covering the different aspects to cover when test code is prepared for the upgrade, including suggestions on how to prevent potential issues that can show up when using the new version of Selenium. To finalize, we also covered a set of possible issues that you can bump into after upgrading, and we shared potential fixes for those issues.

This was originally posted at https://saucelabs.com/resources/articles/how-to-upgrade-to-selenium-4

2.2 - Driver Sessions

Starting and stopping a session is for opening and closing a browser.

Creating Sessions

Creating a new session corresponds with the W3C command for New session

The session is created automatically by initializing a new Driver class object.

Each language allows a session to be created with arguments from one of these classes (or equivalent):

Options to describe the kind of session you want; default values are used for local, but this is required for remote
Some form of CommandExecutor (the implementation varies between languages)
Listeners

Local Driver

The primary unique argument for starting a local driver includes information about starting the required driver service on the local machine.

Service object applies only to local drivers and provides information about the browser driver

Coding Help

Note: This section could use some updated code examples

Show Starting Local driver with multiple arguments.

Check our contribution guidelines and code example formats if you’d like to help.

Remote Driver

The primary unique argument for starting a remote driver includes information about where to execute the code. Read the details in the Remote Driver Section

Quitting Sessions

Quitting a session corresponds to W3C command for Deleting a Session.

Important note: the quit method is different from the close method, and it is recommended to always use quit to end the session

Coding Help

Note: This section could use some updated code examples

Show quitting a session.

Check our contribution guidelines and code example formats if you’d like to help.

2.2.1 - Browser Options

These capabilities are shared by all browsers.

In Selenium 3, capabilities were defined in a session by using Desired Capabilities classes. As of Selenium 4, you must use the browser options classes. For remote driver sessions, a browser options instance is required as it determines which browser will be used.

These options are described in the w3c specification for Capabilities.

Each browser has custom options that may be defined in addition to the ones defined in the specification.

browserName

This capability is used to set the browserName for a given session. If the specified browser is not installed at the remote end, the session creation will fail.

browserVersion

This capability is optional, this is used to set the available browser version at remote end. For Example, if ask for Chrome version 75 on a system that only has 80 installed, the session creation will fail.

pageLoadStrategy

Three types of page load strategies are available.

The page load strategy queries the document.readyState as described in the table below:

Strategy	Ready State	Notes
normal	complete	Used by default, waits for all resources to download
eager	interactive	DOM access is ready, but other resources like images may still be loading
none	Any	Does not block WebDriver at all

The document.readyState property of a document describes the loading state of the current document.

When navigating to a new page via URL, by default, WebDriver will hold off on completing a navigation method (e.g., driver.navigate().get()) until the document ready state is complete. This does not necessarily mean that the page has finished loading, especially for sites like Single Page Applications that use JavaScript to dynamically load content after the Ready State returns complete. Note also that this behavior does not apply to navigation that is a result of clicking an element or submitting a form.

If a page takes a long time to load as a result of downloading assets (e.g., images, css, js) that aren’t important to the automation, you can change from the default parameter of normal to eager or none to speed up the session. This value applies to the entire session, so make sure that your waiting strategy is sufficient to minimize flakiness.

normal (default)

WebDriver waits until the load event fire is returned.

import org.openqa.selenium.PageLoadStrategy;
import org.openqa.selenium.WebDriver;
import org.openqa.selenium.chrome.ChromeOptions;
import org.openqa.selenium.chrome.ChromeDriver;

public class pageLoadStrategy {
  public static void main(String[] args) {
    ChromeOptions chromeOptions = new ChromeOptions();
    chromeOptions.setPageLoadStrategy(PageLoadStrategy.NORMAL);
    WebDriver driver = new ChromeDriver(chromeOptions);
    try {
      // Navigate to Url
      driver.get("https://google.com");
    } finally {
      driver.quit();
    }
  }
}

from selenium import webdriver
from selenium.webdriver.chrome.options import Options
options = Options()
options.page_load_strategy = 'normal'
driver = webdriver.Chrome(options=options)
driver.get("http://www.google.com")
driver.quit()

using OpenQA.Selenium;
using OpenQA.Selenium.Chrome;

namespace pageLoadStrategy {
  class pageLoadStrategy {
    public static void Main(string[] args) {
      var chromeOptions = new ChromeOptions();
      chromeOptions.PageLoadStrategy = PageLoadStrategy.Normal;
      IWebDriver driver = new ChromeDriver(chromeOptions);
      try {
        driver.Navigate().GoToUrl("https://example.com");
      } finally {
        driver.Quit();
      }
    }
  }
}

require 'selenium-webdriver'
caps = Selenium::WebDriver::Remote::Capabilities.chrome
caps.page_load_strategy='normal'

driver = Selenium::WebDriver.for :chrome, :desired_capabilities => caps
driver.get('https://www.google.com')

            let caps = new Capabilities();
            caps.setPageLoadStrategy("normal");
            let driver = await env.builder().withCapabilities(caps).build();

            await driver.get('https://www.google.com');

            driver.quit();

Check code on GitHub

import org.openqa.selenium.PageLoadStrategy
import org.openqa.selenium.chrome.ChromeDriver
import org.openqa.selenium.chrome.ChromeOptions

fun main() {
  val chromeOptions = ChromeOptions()
  chromeOptions.setPageLoadStrategy(PageLoadStrategy.NORMAL)
  val driver = ChromeDriver(chromeOptions)
  try {
    driver.get("https://www.google.com")
  }
  finally {
    driver.quit()
  }
}

eager

WebDriver waits until DOMContentLoaded event fire is returned.

import org.openqa.selenium.PageLoadStrategy;
import org.openqa.selenium.WebDriver;
import org.openqa.selenium.chrome.ChromeOptions;
import org.openqa.selenium.chrome.ChromeDriver;

public class pageLoadStrategy {
  public static void main(String[] args) {
    ChromeOptions chromeOptions = new ChromeOptions();
    chromeOptions.setPageLoadStrategy(PageLoadStrategy.EAGER);
    WebDriver driver = new ChromeDriver(chromeOptions);
    try {
      // Navigate to Url
      driver.get("https://google.com");
    } finally {
      driver.quit();
    }
  }
}

from selenium import webdriver
from selenium.webdriver.chrome.options import Options
options = Options()
options.page_load_strategy = 'eager'
driver = webdriver.Chrome(options=options)
driver.get("http://www.google.com")
driver.quit()

using OpenQA.Selenium;
using OpenQA.Selenium.Chrome;

namespace pageLoadStrategy {
  class pageLoadStrategy {
    public static void Main(string[] args) {
      var chromeOptions = new ChromeOptions();
      chromeOptions.PageLoadStrategy = PageLoadStrategy.Eager;
      IWebDriver driver = new ChromeDriver(chromeOptions);
      try {
        driver.Navigate().GoToUrl("https://example.com");
      } finally {
        driver.Quit();
      }
    }
  }
}

require 'selenium-webdriver'
caps = Selenium::WebDriver::Remote::Capabilities.chrome
caps.page_load_strategy='eager'

driver = Selenium::WebDriver.for :chrome, :desired_capabilities => caps
driver.get('https://www.google.com')

            let caps = new Capabilities();
            caps.setPageLoadStrategy("eager");
            let driver = await env.builder().withCapabilities(caps).build();

            await driver.get('https://www.google.com');

            driver.quit();

Check code on GitHub

import org.openqa.selenium.PageLoadStrategy
import org.openqa.selenium.chrome.ChromeDriver
import org.openqa.selenium.chrome.ChromeOptions

fun main() {
  val chromeOptions = ChromeOptions()
  chromeOptions.setPageLoadStrategy(PageLoadStrategy.EAGER)
  val driver = ChromeDriver(chromeOptions)
  try {
    driver.get("https://www.google.com")
  }
  finally {
    driver.quit()
  }
}

none

WebDriver only waits until the initial page is downloaded.

import org.openqa.selenium.PageLoadStrategy;
import org.openqa.selenium.WebDriver;
import org.openqa.selenium.chrome.ChromeOptions;
import org.openqa.selenium.chrome.ChromeDriver;

public class pageLoadStrategy {
  public static void main(String[] args) {
    ChromeOptions chromeOptions = new ChromeOptions();
    chromeOptions.setPageLoadStrategy(PageLoadStrategy.NONE);
    WebDriver driver = new ChromeDriver(chromeOptions);
    try {
      // Navigate to Url
      driver.get("https://google.com");
    } finally {
      driver.quit();
    }
  }
}

from selenium import webdriver
from selenium.webdriver.chrome.options import Options
options = Options()
options.page_load_strategy = 'none'
driver = webdriver.Chrome(options=options)
driver.get("http://www.google.com")
driver.quit()

using OpenQA.Selenium;
using OpenQA.Selenium.Chrome;

namespace pageLoadStrategy {
  class pageLoadStrategy {
    public static void Main(string[] args) {
      var chromeOptions = new ChromeOptions();
      chromeOptions.PageLoadStrategy = PageLoadStrategy.None;
      IWebDriver driver = new ChromeDriver(chromeOptions);
      try {
        driver.Navigate().GoToUrl("https://example.com");
      } finally {
        driver.Quit();
      }
    }
  }
}

require 'selenium-webdriver'
caps = Selenium::WebDriver::Remote::Capabilities.chrome
caps.page_load_strategy='none'

driver = Selenium::WebDriver.for :chrome, :desired_capabilities => caps
driver.get('https://www.google.com')

            let caps = new Capabilities();
            caps.setPageLoadStrategy("none");
            let driver = await env.builder().withCapabilities(caps).build();

            await driver.get('https://www.google.com');

            driver.quit();

Check code on GitHub

import org.openqa.selenium.PageLoadStrategy
import org.openqa.selenium.chrome.ChromeDriver
import org.openqa.selenium.chrome.ChromeOptions

fun main() {
  val chromeOptions = ChromeOptions()
  chromeOptions.setPageLoadStrategy(PageLoadStrategy.NONE)
  val driver = ChromeDriver(chromeOptions)
  try {
    driver.get("https://www.google.com")
  }
  finally {
    driver.quit()
  }
}

platformName

This identifies the operating system at the remote-end, fetching the platformName returns the OS name.

In cloud-based providers, setting platformName sets the OS at the remote-end.

acceptInsecureCerts

This capability checks whether an expired (or) invalid TLS Certificate is used while navigating during a session.

If the capability is set to false, an insecure certificate error will be returned as navigation encounters any domain certificate problems. If set to true, invalid certificate will be trusted by the browser.

All self-signed certificates will be trusted by this capability by default. Once set, acceptInsecureCerts capability will have an effect for the entire session.

timeouts

A WebDriver session is imposed with a certain session timeout interval, during which the user can control the behaviour of executing scripts or retrieving information from the browser.

Each session timeout is configured with combination of different timeouts as described below:

Script Timeout

Specifies when to interrupt an executing script in a current browsing context. The default timeout 30,000 is imposed when a new session is created by WebDriver.

Page Load Timeout

Specifies the time interval in which web page needs to be loaded in a current browsing context. The default timeout 300,000 is imposed when a new session is created by WebDriver. If page load limits a given/default time frame, the script will be stopped by TimeoutException.

Implicit Wait Timeout

This specifies the time to wait for the implicit element location strategy when locating elements. The default timeout 0 is imposed when a new session is created by WebDriver.

unhandledPromptBehavior

Specifies the state of current session’s user prompt handler. Defaults to dismiss and notify state

User Prompt Handler

This defines what action must take when a user prompt encounters at the remote-end. This is defined by unhandledPromptBehavior capability and has the following states:

dismiss
accept
dismiss and notify
accept and notify
ignore

setWindowRect

Indicates whether the remote end supports all of the resizing and repositioning commands.

strictFileInteractability

This new capability indicates if strict interactability checks should be applied to input type=file elements. As strict interactability checks are off by default, there is a change in behaviour when using Element Send Keys with hidden file upload controls.

proxy

A proxy server acts as an intermediary for requests between a client and a server. In simple, the traffic flows through the proxy server on its way to the address you requested and back.

A proxy server for automation scripts with Selenium could be helpful for:

Capture network traffic
Mock backend calls made by the website
Access the required website under complex network topologies or strict corporate restrictions/policies.

If you are in a corporate environment, and a browser fails to connect to a URL, this is most likely because the environment needs a proxy to be accessed.

Selenium WebDriver provides a way to proxy settings:

import org.openqa.selenium.Proxy;
import org.openqa.selenium.WebDriver;
import org.openqa.selenium.chrome.ChromeDriver;
import org.openqa.selenium.chrome.ChromeOptions;

public class proxyTest {
public static void main(String[] args) {
Proxy proxy = new Proxy();
proxy.setHttpProxy("<HOST:PORT>");
ChromeOptions options = new ChromeOptions();
options.setCapability("proxy", proxy);
WebDriver driver = new ChromeDriver(options);
driver.get("https://www.google.com/");
driver.manage().window().maximize();
driver.quit();
}
}

from selenium import webdriver

PROXY = "<HOST:PORT>"
webdriver.DesiredCapabilities.FIREFOX['proxy'] = {
"httpProxy": PROXY,
"ftpProxy": PROXY,
"sslProxy": PROXY,
"proxyType": "MANUAL",

}

with webdriver.Firefox() as driver:
driver.get("https://selenium.dev")

using OpenQA.Selenium;
using OpenQA.Selenium.Chrome;

public class ProxyTest{
public static void Main() {
ChromeOptions options = new ChromeOptions();
Proxy proxy = new Proxy();
proxy.Kind = ProxyKind.Manual;
proxy.IsAutoDetect = false;
proxy.SslProxy = "<HOST:PORT>";
options.Proxy = proxy;
options.AddArgument("ignore-certificate-errors");
IWebDriver driver = new ChromeDriver(options);
driver.Navigate().GoToUrl("https://www.selenium.dev/");
}
}

proxy = Selenium::WebDriver::Proxy.new(http: '<HOST:PORT>')
cap   = Selenium::WebDriver::Remote::Capabilities.chrome(proxy: proxy)

driver = Selenium::WebDriver.for(:chrome, capabilities: cap)
driver.get('http://google.com')

let webdriver = require('selenium-webdriver');
let chrome = require('selenium-webdriver/chrome');
let proxy = require('selenium-webdriver/proxy');
let opts = new chrome.Options();

(async function example() {
opts.setProxy(proxy.manual({http: '<HOST:PORT>'}));
let driver = new webdriver.Builder()
.forBrowser('chrome')
.setChromeOptions(opts)
.build();
try {
await driver.get("https://selenium.dev");
}
finally {
await driver.quit();
}
}());

import org.openqa.selenium.Proxy
import org.openqa.selenium.WebDriver
import org.openqa.selenium.chrome.ChromeDriver
import org.openqa.selenium.chrome.ChromeOptions

class proxyTest {
fun main() {

        val proxy = Proxy()
        proxy.setHttpProxy("<HOST:PORT>")
        val options = ChromeOptions()
        options.setCapability("proxy", proxy)
        val driver: WebDriver = ChromeDriver(options)
        driver["https://www.google.com/"]
        driver.manage().window().maximize()
        driver.quit()
    }
}

2.2.2 - Command executors

These allow you to set various parameters for the HTTP library

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2.2.3 - Command Listeners

These allow you to execute custom actions in every time specific Selenium commands are sent

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2.2.4 - Browser Service

The Service classes are for managing the starting and stopping of drivers. They are not applicable in Remote Drivers.

Location of the driver
port to use
command line arguments to use

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2.2.5 - Remote WebDriver

You can use WebDriver remotely the same way you would use it locally. The primary difference is that a remote WebDriver needs to be configured so that it can run your tests on a separate machine.

A remote WebDriver is composed of two pieces: a client and a server. The client is your WebDriver test and the server is simply a Java servlet, which can be hosted in any modern JEE app server.

To run a remote WebDriver client, we first need to connect to the RemoteWebDriver. We do this by pointing the URL to the address of the server running our tests. In order to customize our configuration, we set desired capabilities. Below is an example of instantiating a remote WebDriver object pointing to our remote web server, www.example.com, running our tests on Firefox.

FirefoxOptions firefoxOptions = new FirefoxOptions();
WebDriver driver = new RemoteWebDriver(new URL("http://www.example.com"), firefoxOptions);
driver.get("http://www.google.com");
driver.quit();

from selenium import webdriver

firefox_options = webdriver.FirefoxOptions()
driver = webdriver.Remote(
    command_executor='http://www.example.com',
    options=firefox_options
)
driver.get("http://www.google.com")
driver.quit()

 FirefoxOptions firefoxOptions = new FirefoxOptions();
 IWebDriver driver = new RemoteWebDriver(new Uri("http://www.example.com"), firefoxOptions);
 driver.Navigate().GoToUrl("http://www.google.com");
 driver.Quit();

require 'selenium-webdriver'

driver = Selenium::WebDriver.for :remote, url: "http://www.example.com", desired_capabilities: :firefox
driver.get "http://www.google.com"
driver.close

const { Builder, Capabilities } = require("selenium-webdriver");
var capabilities = Capabilities.firefox();
(async function helloSelenium() {
    let driver = new Builder()
        .usingServer("http://example.com")   
        .withCapabilities(capabilities)
        .build();
    try {
        await driver.get('http://www.google.com');
    } finally {
        await driver.quit();
    }
})();

firefoxOptions = FirefoxOptions()
driver: WebDriver = new RemoteWebDriver(new URL("http://www.example.com"), firefoxOptions)
driver.get("http://www.google.com")
driver.quit()

To further customize our test configuration, we can add other desired capabilities.

Browser options

For example, suppose you wanted to run Chrome on Windows XP, using Chrome version 67:

ChromeOptions chromeOptions = new ChromeOptions();
chromeOptions.setCapability("browserVersion", "67");
chromeOptions.setCapability("platformName", "Windows XP");
WebDriver driver = new RemoteWebDriver(new URL("http://www.example.com"), chromeOptions);
driver.get("http://www.google.com");
driver.quit();

from selenium import webdriver

chrome_options = webdriver.ChromeOptions()
chrome_options.set_capability("browserVersion", "67")
chrome_options.set_capability("platformName", "Windows XP")
driver = webdriver.Remote(
    command_executor='http://www.example.com',
    options=chrome_options
)
driver.get("http://www.google.com")
driver.quit()

var chromeOptions = new ChromeOptions();
chromeOptions.BrowserVersion = "67";
chromeOptions.PlatformName = "Windows XP";
IWebDriver driver = new RemoteWebDriver(new Uri("http://www.example.com"), chromeOptions);
driver.Navigate().GoToUrl("http://www.google.com");
driver.Quit();

caps = Selenium::WebDriver::Remote::Capabilities.chrome
caps.platform = Windows XP
caps.version = 67

driver = Selenium::WebDriver.for :remote, :url => "http://www.example.com", :desired_capabilities => caps

const { Builder } = require("selenium-webdriver");
const chrome = require("selenium-webdriver/chrome");
let opts = new chrome.Options();
opts.setAcceptInsecureCerts(true);
opts.setBrowserVersion('67');
opts.setPlatform('Windows XP');
(async function helloSelenium() {
    let driver = new Builder()
        .usingServer("http://example.com")
        .forBrowser('chrome')
        .setChromeOptions(opts)
        .build();
    try {
        await driver.get('http://www.google.com');
    }
    finally {
        await driver.quit();
    }
})();

val chromeOptions = ChromeOptions()
chromeOptions.setCapability("browserVersion", "67")
chromeOptions.setCapability("platformName", "Windows XP")
val driver: WebDriver = new RemoteWebDriver(new URL("http://www.example.com"), chromeOptions)
driver.get("http://www.google.com")
driver.quit()

Local file detector

The Local File Detector allows the transfer of files from the client machine to the remote server. For example, if a test needs to upload a file to a web application, a remote WebDriver can automatically transfer the file from the local machine to the remote web server during runtime. This allows the file to be uploaded from the remote machine running the test. It is not enabled by default and can be enabled in the following way:

driver.setFileDetector(new LocalFileDetector());

from selenium.webdriver.remote.file_detector import LocalFileDetector

driver.file_detector = LocalFileDetector()

var allowsDetection = this.driver as IAllowsFileDetection;
if (allowsDetection != null)
{
   allowsDetection.FileDetector = new LocalFileDetector();
}

@driver.file_detector = lambda do |args|
  # args => ["/path/to/file"]
  str = args.first.to_s
  str if File.exist?(str)
end

var remote = require('selenium-webdriver/remote');
driver.setFileDetector(new remote.FileDetector);

driver.fileDetector = LocalFileDetector()

Once the above code is defined, you can upload a file in your test in the following way:

driver.get("http://sso.dev.saucelabs.com/test/guinea-file-upload");
WebElement upload = driver.findElement(By.id("myfile"));
upload.sendKeys("/Users/sso/the/local/path/to/darkbulb.jpg");

driver.get("http://sso.dev.saucelabs.com/test/guinea-file-upload")

driver.find_element(By.ID, "myfile").send_keys("/Users/sso/the/local/path/to/darkbulb.jpg")

driver.Navigate().GoToUrl("http://sso.dev.saucelabs.com/test/guinea-file-upload");
IWebElement upload = driver.FindElement(By.Id("myfile"));
upload.SendKeys(@"/Users/sso/the/local/path/to/darkbulb.jpg");

@driver.navigate.to "http://sso.dev.saucelabs.com/test/guinea-file-upload"
    element = @driver.find_element(:id, 'myfile')
    element.send_keys "/Users/sso/SauceLabs/sauce/hostess/maitred/maitred/public/images/darkbulb.jpg"

driver.get("http://sso.dev.saucelabs.com/test/guinea-file-upload");
var upload = driver.findElement(By.id("myfile"));
upload.sendKeys("/Users/sso/the/local/path/to/darkbulb.jpg");

driver.get("http://sso.dev.saucelabs.com/test/guinea-file-upload")
val upload: WebElement = driver.findElement(By.id("myfile"))
upload.sendKeys("/Users/sso/the/local/path/to/darkbulb.jpg")

Tracing client requests

This feature is only available for Java client binding (Beta onwards). The Remote WebDriver client sends requests to the Selenium Grid server, which passes them to the WebDriver. Tracing should be enabled at the server and client-side to trace the HTTP requests end-to-end. Both ends should have a trace exporter setup pointing to the visualization framework. By default, tracing is enabled for both client and server. To set up the visualization framework Jaeger UI and Selenium Grid 4, please refer to Tracing Setup for the desired version.

For client-side setup, follow the steps below.

Add the required dependencies

Installation of external libraries for tracing exporter can be done using Maven. Add the opentelemetry-exporter-jaeger and grpc-netty dependency in your project pom.xml:

  <dependency>
      <groupId>io.opentelemetry</groupId>
      <artifactId>opentelemetry-exporter-jaeger</artifactId>
      <version>1.0.0</version>
    </dependency>
    <dependency>
      <groupId>io.grpc</groupId>
      <artifactId>grpc-netty</artifactId>
      <version>1.35.0</version>
    </dependency>

Add/pass the required system properties while running the client

Java

System.setProperty("otel.traces.exporter", "jaeger");
System.setProperty("otel.exporter.jaeger.endpoint", "http://localhost:14250");
System.setProperty("otel.resource.attributes", "service.name=selenium-java-client");

ImmutableCapabilities capabilities = new ImmutableCapabilities("browserName", "chrome");

WebDriver driver = new RemoteWebDriver(new URL("http://www.example.com"), capabilities);

driver.get("http://www.google.com");

driver.quit();

Please refer to Tracing Setup for more information on external dependencies versions required for the desired Selenium version.

More information can be found at:

OpenTelemetry: https://opentelemetry.io
Configuring OpenTelemetry: https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-java/tree/main/sdk-extensions/autoconfigure
Jaeger: https://www.jaegertracing.io
Selenium Grid Observability

2.3 - Supported Browsers

Each browser has custom capabilities and unique features.

2.3.1 - Chrome specific functionality

These are capabilities and features specific to Google Chrome browsers.

By default, Selenium 4 is compatible with Chrome v75 and greater. Note that the version of the Chrome browser and the version of chromedriver must match the major version.

Options

Capabilities common to all browsers are described on the Options page.

Capabilities unique to Chrome can be found at Google’s page for Capabilities & ChromeOptions

Starting a Chrome session with basic defined options looks like this:

        ChromeOptions options = new ChromeOptions();
        driver = new ChromeDriver(options);

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    options = ChromeOptions()
    driver = webdriver.Chrome(options=options)

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            var options = new ChromeOptions();
            var driver = new ChromeDriver(options);

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    options = Selenium::WebDriver::Options.chrome
    @driver = Selenium::WebDriver.for :chrome, options: options

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            let options = new chrome.Options();
            driver = await new Builder()
                .setChromeOptions(options)
                .forBrowser('chrome')
                .build();

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Here are a few common use cases with different capabilities:

Arguments

The args parameter is for a list of Command Line Switches used when starting the browser. Commonly used args include --start-maximized and user-data-dir=/tmp/temp_profile

Add an argument to options:

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Start browser in a specified location

The binary parameter takes the path of an alternate location of browser to use. With this parameter you can use chromedriver to drive various Chromium based browsers.

Add a browser location to options:

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Add extensions

The extensions parameter accepts crx files

Add an extension to options:

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Keeping browser open

Setting the detach parameter to true will keep the browser open after the driver process has been quit.

Add a binary to options:

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Excluding arguments

Chrome adds various arguments, if you do not want those arguments added, pass them into excludeSwitches. A common example is to turn the popup blocker back on.

Set excluded arguments on options:

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Casting

You can drive Chrome Cast devices, including sharing tabs

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Network conditions

You can simulate various network conditions.

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Logs

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Permissions

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DevTools

See the Chrome DevTools section for more information about using Chrome DevTools

2.3.2 - Edge specific functionality

These are capabilities and features specific to Microsoft Edge browsers.

Microsoft Edge is implemented with Chromium, with the earliest supported version of v79. Similar to Chrome, the major version number of edgedriver must match the major version of the Edge browser.

All capabilities and options found on the Chrome page work for Edge as well.

Options

Starting an Edge session with basic defined options looks like this:

        ChromeOptions options = new ChromeOptions();
        driver = new ChromeDriver(options);

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    options = ChromeOptions()
    driver = webdriver.Chrome(options=options)

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            var options = new ChromeOptions();
            var driver = new ChromeDriver(options);

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    options = Selenium::WebDriver::Options.chrome
    @driver = Selenium::WebDriver.for :chrome, options: options

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            let options = new edge.Options();
            driver = await new Builder()
                .setEdgeOptions(options)
                .forBrowser('MicrosoftEdge')
                .setEdgeService(new edge.ServiceBuilder(edgedriver.binPath()))
                .build();

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Internet Explorer Compatibility Mode

Microsoft Edge can be driven in “Internet Explorer Compatibility Mode”, which uses the Internet Explorer Driver classes in conjunction with Microsoft Edge. Read the Internet Explorer page for more details.

2.3.3 - Firefox specific functionality

These are capabilities and features specific to Mozilla Firefox browsers.

Selenium 4 requires Firefox 78 or greater. It is recommended to always use the latest version of geckodriver.

Options

Capabilities common to all browsers are described on the Options page.

Capabilities unique to Firefox can be found at Mozilla’s page for firefoxOptions

Starting a Firefox session with basic defined options looks like this:

        FirefoxOptions options = new FirefoxOptions();
        driver = new FirefoxDriver(options);

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    options = FirefoxOptions()
    driver = webdriver.Firefox(options=options)

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            var options = new FirefoxOptions();
            driver = new FirefoxDriver(options);

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    options = Selenium::WebDriver::Options.firefox
    @driver = Selenium::WebDriver.for :firefox, options: options

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            let options = new firefox.Options();
            driver = await new Builder()
                .setFirefoxOptions(options)
                .forBrowser('firefox')
                .build();

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Arguments

The args parameter is for a list of Command line switches used when starting the browser.
Commonly used args include -headless and "-profile", "/path/to/profile"

Add an argument to options:

Python

options=Options()
options.add_argument("-profile")
options.add_argument("/path/to/profile")

Start browser in a specified location

The binary parameter takes the path of an alternate location of browser to use. For example, with this parameter you can use geckodriver to drive Firefox Nightly instead of the production version when both are present on your computer.

Add a browser location to options:

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Profiles

There are several ways to work with Firefox profiles

FirefoxProfile profile = new FirefoxProfile();
FirefoxOptions options = new FirefoxOptions();
options.setProfile(profile);
driver = new RemoteWebDriver(options);

from selenium.webdriver.firefox.options import Options
from selenium.webdriver.firefox.firefox_profile import FirefoxProfile
options=Options()
firefox_profile = FirefoxProfile()
firefox_profile.set_preference("javascript.enabled", False)
options.profile = firefox_profile

var options = new FirefoxOptions();
var profile = new FirefoxProfile();
options.Profile = profile;
var driver = new RemoteWebDriver(options);

profile = Selenium::WebDriver::Firefox::Profile.new
profile['browser.download.dir'] = "/tmp/webdriver-downloads"
options = Selenium::WebDriver::Firefox::Options.new(profile: profile)
driver = Selenium::WebDriver.for :firefox, options: options

const { Builder } = require("selenium-webdriver");
const firefox = require('selenium-webdriver/firefox');

const options = new firefox.Options();
let profile = '/path to custom profile';
options.setProfile(profile);
const driver = new Builder()
    .forBrowser('firefox')
    .setFirefoxOptions(options)
    .build();

val options = FirefoxOptions()
options.profile = FirefoxProfile()
driver = RemoteWebDriver(options)

Add-ons

Unlike Chrome, Firefox extensions are not added as part of capabilities, they are created after starting the driver.

Installation

A signed xpi file you would get from Mozilla Addon page


    @Test

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    driver.get("https://www.selenium.dev/selenium/web/blank.html")
    injected = driver.find_element(By.ID, "webextensions-selenium-example")

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        }

         [TestMethod]

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    driver.install_addon(extension_file_path)

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Uninstallation

Uninstalling an addon requires knowing its id. The id can be obtained from the return value when installing the add-on.


    @Test
    public void installUnsignedAddonPath() {

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    driver.get("https://www.selenium.dev/selenium/web/blank.html")
    assert len(driver.find_elements(By.ID, "webextensions-selenium-example")) == 0

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Selenium v4.5


         [TestMethod]
         public void InstallUnsignedAddon()
         {

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    extension_id = driver.install_addon(extension_file_path)
    driver.uninstall_addon(extension_id)

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Unsigned installation

When working with an unfinished or unpublished extension, it will likely not be signed. As such, it can only be installed as “temporary.” This can be done by passing in either a zip file or a directory, here’s an example with a directory:

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    driver.get("https://www.selenium.dev/selenium/web/blank.html")
    injected = driver.find_element(By.ID, "webextensions-selenium-example")

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Selenium v4.5

         }
    }
}

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Selenium v4.5

    driver.install_addon(extension_dir_path, true)

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Full page screenshots

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Context

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2.3.4 - IE specific functionality

These are capabilities and features specific to Microsoft Internet Explorer browsers.

As of June 2022, Selenium officially no longer supports standalone Internet Explorer. The Internet Explorer driver still supports running Microsoft Edge in “IE Compatibility Mode.”

Special considerations

The IE Driver is the only driver maintained by the Selenium Project directly. While binaries for both the 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Internet Explorer are available, there are some known limitations with the 64-bit driver. As such it is recommended to use the 32-bit driver.

Additional information about using Internet Explorer can be found on the IE Driver Server page

Options

Starting a Microsoft Edge browser in Internet Explorer Compatibility mode with basic defined options looks like this:

        InternetExplorerOptions options = new InternetExplorerOptions();
        options.ignoreZoomSettings();
        driver = new InternetExplorerDriver(options);

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Note that Python must specify service class for IE to use Driver Manager

    service = InternetExplorerService(executable_path=IEDriverManager().install())
    options = InternetExplorerOptions()
    options.ignore_zoom_level = True
    driver = webdriver.Ie(options=options, service=service)

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Note that the .NET Driver Manager does not support Internet Explorer, so the location must be in a directory on PATH, or specified explicitly as in this example.

            var driverPath = Environment.GetEnvironmentVariable("IE_DRIVER_PATH");
            var service = InternetExplorerDriverService.CreateDefaultService(driverPath);
            var options = new InternetExplorerOptions
            {
                IgnoreZoomLevel = true,
            };
            var driver = new InternetExplorerDriver(service, options);

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    options = Selenium::WebDriver::Options.ie(ignore_zoom_level: true)
    @driver = Selenium::WebDriver.for :ie, options: options

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  let driver = await new Builder()
    .forBrowser('internet explorer')
    .setIEOptions(options)
    .build();

  val options = InternetExplorerOptions()
  options.attachToEdgeChrome()
  options.withEdgeExecutablePath("/path/to/edge/browser")
  val driver = InternetExplorerDriver(options)

As of Internet Explorer Driver v4.5.0:

If IE is not present on the system (default in Windows 11), you do not need to use the two parameters above. IE Driver will use Edge and will automatically locate it.
If IE and Edge are both present on the system, you only need to set attaching to Edge, IE Driver will automatically locate Edge on your system.

Here are a few common use cases with different capabilities:

fileUploadDialogTimeout

In some environments, Internet Explorer may timeout when opening the File Upload dialog. IEDriver has a default timeout of 1000ms, but you can increase the timeout using the fileUploadDialogTimeout capability.

InternetExplorerOptions options = new InternetExplorerOptions();
options.waitForUploadDialogUpTo(Duration.ofSeconds(2));
WebDriver driver = new RemoteWebDriver(options);

from selenium import webdriver

options = webdriver.IeOptions()
options.file_upload_dialog_timeout = 2000
driver = webdriver.Ie(options=options)

driver.get("http://www.google.com")

driver.quit()

var options = new InternetExplorerOptions();
options.FileUploadDialogTimeout = TimeSpan.FromMilliseconds(2000);
var driver = new RemoteWebDriver(options);

options = Selenium::WebDriver::IE::Options.new
options.file_upload_dialog_timeout = 2000
driver = Selenium::WebDriver.for(:ie, options: options)

const ie = require('selenium-webdriver/ie');
let options = new ie.Options().fileUploadDialogTimeout(2000);
let driver = await Builder()
          .setIeOptions(options)
          .build();

val options = InternetExplorerOptions()
options.waitForUploadDialogUpTo(Duration.ofSeconds(2))
val driver = RemoteWebDriver(options)

ensureCleanSession

When set to true, this capability clears the Cache, Browser History and Cookies for all running instances of InternetExplorer including those started manually or by the driver. By default, it is set to false.

Using this capability will cause performance drop while launching the browser, as the driver will wait until the cache gets cleared before launching the IE browser.

This capability accepts a Boolean value as parameter.

InternetExplorerOptions options = new InternetExplorerOptions();
options.destructivelyEnsureCleanSession();
WebDriver driver = new RemoteWebDriver(options);

from selenium import webdriver

options = webdriver.IeOptions()
options.ensure_clean_session = True
driver = webdriver.Ie(options=options)

driver.get("http://www.google.com")

driver.quit()

var options = new InternetExplorerOptions();
options.EnsureCleanSession = true;
var driver = new RemoteWebDriver(options);

options = Selenium::WebDriver::IE::Options.new
options.ensure_clean_session = true
driver = Selenium::WebDriver.for(:ie, options: options)

const ie = require('selenium-webdriver/ie');
let options = new ie.Options().ensureCleanSession(true);
let driver = await Builder()
          .setIeOptions(options)
          .build();

val options = InternetExplorerOptions()
options.destructivelyEnsureCleanSession()
val driver = RemoteWebDriver(options)

ignoreZoomSetting

InternetExplorer driver expects the browser zoom level to be 100%, else the driver will throw an exception. This default behaviour can be disabled by setting the ignoreZoomSetting to true.

This capability accepts a Boolean value as parameter.

InternetExplorerOptions options = new InternetExplorerOptions();
options.ignoreZoomSettings();
WebDriver driver = new RemoteWebDriver(options);

from selenium import webdriver

options = webdriver.IeOptions()
options.ignore_zoom_level = True
driver = webdriver.Ie(options=options)

driver.get("http://www.google.com")

driver.quit()

var options = new InternetExplorerOptions();
options.IgnoreZoomLevel = true;
var driver = new RemoteWebDriver(options);

options = Selenium::WebDriver::IE::Options.new
options.ignore_zoom_level = true
driver = Selenium::WebDriver.for(:ie, options: options)

const ie = require('selenium-webdriver/ie');
let options = new ie.Options().ignoreZoomSetting(true);
let driver = await Builder()
          .setIeOptions(options)
          .build();

val options = InternetExplorerOptions()
options.ignoreZoomSettings()
val driver = RemoteWebDriver(options)

ignoreProtectedModeSettings

Whether to skip the Protected Mode check while launching a new IE session.

If not set and Protected Mode settings are not same for all zones, an exception will be thrown by the driver.

If capability is set to true, tests may become flaky, unresponsive, or browsers may hang. However, this is still by far a second-best choice, and the first choice should always be to actually set the Protected Mode settings of each zone manually. If a user is using this property, only a “best effort” at support will be given.

This capability accepts a Boolean value as parameter.

InternetExplorerOptions options = new InternetExplorerOptions();
options.introduceFlakinessByIgnoringSecurityDomains();
WebDriver driver = new RemoteWebDriver(options);

from selenium import webdriver

options = webdriver.IeOptions()
options.ignore_protected_mode_settings = True
driver = webdriver.Ie(options=options)

driver.get("http://www.google.com")

driver.quit()

var options = new InternetExplorerOptions();
options.IntroduceInstabilityByIgnoringProtectedModeSettings = true;
var driver = new RemoteWebDriver(options);

options = Selenium::WebDriver::IE::Options.new
options.ignore_protected_mode_settings = true
driver = Selenium::WebDriver.for(:ie, options: options)

const ie = require('selenium-webdriver/ie');
let options = new ie.Options().introduceFlakinessByIgnoringProtectedModeSettings(true);
let driver = await Builder()
          .setIeOptions(options)
          .build();

val options = InternetExplorerOptions()
options.introduceFlakinessByIgnoringSecurityDomains()
val driver = RemoteWebDriver(options)

silent

When set to true, this capability suppresses the diagnostic output of the IEDriverServer.

This capability accepts a Boolean value as parameter.

InternetExplorerOptions options = new InternetExplorerOptions();
options.setCapability("silent", true);
WebDriver driver = new InternetExplorerDriver(options);

from selenium import webdriver

options = webdriver.IeOptions()
options.set_capability("silent", True)
driver = webdriver.Ie(options=options)

driver.get("http://www.google.com")

driver.quit()

InternetExplorerOptions options = new InternetExplorerOptions();
options.AddAdditionalInternetExplorerOption("silent", true);
IWebDriver driver = new InternetExplorerDriver(options);

    
    
    
    
    <p><a href=https://github.com/SeleniumHQ/seleniumhq.github.io/tree/trunk/examples>
    <span class="selenium-badge-code" data-toggle="tooltip" data-placement="right"
          title="Code examples are added to the projects in examples directory of repo; see about section for contribution and style guids">Add Example</span></a></p>

const {Builder,By, Capabilities} = require('selenium-webdriver');
let caps = Capabilities.ie();
caps.set('silent', true);

(async function example() {
    let driver = await new Builder()
        .forBrowser('internet explorer')
        .withCapabilities(caps)
        .build();
    try {
        await driver.get('http://www.google.com/ncr');
    }
    finally {
        await driver.quit();
    }
})();

import org.openqa.selenium.Capabilities
import org.openqa.selenium.ie.InternetExplorerDriver
import org.openqa.selenium.ie.InternetExplorerOptions

fun main() {
    val options = InternetExplorerOptions()
    options.setCapability("silent", true)
    val driver = InternetExplorerDriver(options)
    try {
        driver.get("https://google.com/ncr")
        val caps = driver.getCapabilities()
        println(caps)
    } finally {
        driver.quit()
    }
}

Command-Line Options

Internet Explorer includes several command-line options that enable you to troubleshoot and configure the browser.

The following describes few supported command-line options

-private : Used to start IE in private browsing mode. This works for IE 8 and later versions.
-k : Starts Internet Explorer in kiosk mode. The browser opens in a maximized window that does not display the address bar, the navigation buttons, or the status bar.
-extoff : Starts IE in no add-on mode. This option specifically used to troubleshoot problems with browser add-ons. Works in IE 7 and later versions.

Note: forceCreateProcessApi should to enabled in-order for command line arguments to work.

import org.openqa.selenium.Capabilities;
import org.openqa.selenium.ie.InternetExplorerDriver;
import org.openqa.selenium.ie.InternetExplorerOptions;

public class ieTest {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        InternetExplorerOptions options = new InternetExplorerOptions();
        options.useCreateProcessApiToLaunchIe();
        options.addCommandSwitches("-k");
        InternetExplorerDriver driver = new InternetExplorerDriver(options);
        try {
            driver.get("https://google.com/ncr");
            Capabilities caps = driver.getCapabilities();
            System.out.println(caps);
        } finally {
            driver.quit();
        }
    }
}

from selenium import webdriver

options = webdriver.IeOptions()
options.add_argument('-private')
options.force_create_process_api = True
driver = webdriver.Ie(options=options)

driver.get("http://www.google.com")

driver.quit()

using System;
using OpenQA.Selenium;
using OpenQA.Selenium.IE;

namespace ieTest {
 class Program {
  static void Main(string[] args) {
   InternetExplorerOptions options = new InternetExplorerOptions();
   options.ForceCreateProcessApi = true;
   options.BrowserCommandLineArguments = "-k";
   IWebDriver driver = new InternetExplorerDriver(options);
   driver.Url = "https://google.com/ncr";
  }
 }
}

require 'selenium-webdriver'
options = Selenium::WebDriver::IE::Options.new
options.force_create_process_api = true
options.add_argument('-k')
driver = Selenium::WebDriver.for(:ie, options: options)

begin
  driver.get 'https://google.com'
  puts(driver.capabilities.to_json)
ensure
  driver.quit
end

const ie = require('selenium-webdriver/ie');
let options = new ie.Options();
options.addBrowserCommandSwitches('-k');
options.addBrowserCommandSwitches('-private');
options.forceCreateProcessApi(true);

driver = await env.builder()
          .setIeOptions(options)
          .build();

import org.openqa.selenium.Capabilities
import org.openqa.selenium.ie.InternetExplorerDriver
import org.openqa.selenium.ie.InternetExplorerOptions

fun main() {
    val options = InternetExplorerOptions()
    options.useCreateProcessApiToLaunchIe()
    options.addCommandSwitches("-k")
    val driver = InternetExplorerDriver(options)
    try {
        driver.get("https://google.com/ncr")
        val caps = driver.getCapabilities()
        println(caps)
    } finally {
        driver.quit()
    }
}

forceCreateProcessApi

Forces launching Internet Explorer using the CreateProcess API. The default value is false.

For IE 8 and above, this option requires the “TabProcGrowth” registry value to be set to 0.

import org.openqa.selenium.Capabilities;
import org.openqa.selenium.ie.InternetExplorerDriver;
import org.openqa.selenium.ie.InternetExplorerOptions;

public class ieTest {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        InternetExplorerOptions options = new InternetExplorerOptions();
        options.useCreateProcessApiToLaunchIe();
        InternetExplorerDriver driver = new InternetExplorerDriver(options);
        try {
            driver.get("https://google.com/ncr");
            Capabilities caps = driver.getCapabilities();
            System.out.println(caps);
        } finally {
            driver.quit();
        }
    }
}

from selenium import webdriver

options = webdriver.IeOptions()
options.force_create_process_api = True
driver = webdriver.Ie(options=options)

driver.get("http://www.google.com")

driver.quit()

using System;
using OpenQA.Selenium;
using OpenQA.Selenium.IE;

namespace ieTest {
 class Program {
  static void Main(string[] args) {
   InternetExplorerOptions options = new InternetExplorerOptions();
   options.ForceCreateProcessApi = true;
   IWebDriver driver = new InternetExplorerDriver(options);
   driver.Url = "https://google.com/ncr";
  }
 }
}

require 'selenium-webdriver'
options = Selenium::WebDriver::IE::Options.new
options.force_create_process_api = true
driver = Selenium::WebDriver.for(:ie, options: options)

begin
  driver.get 'https://google.com'
  puts(driver.capabilities.to_json)
ensure
  driver.quit
end

const ie = require('selenium-webdriver/ie');
let options = new ie.Options();
options.forceCreateProcessApi(true);

driver = await env.builder()
          .setIeOptions(options)
          .build();

import org.openqa.selenium.Capabilities
import org.openqa.selenium.ie.InternetExplorerDriver
import org.openqa.selenium.ie.InternetExplorerOptions

fun main() {
    val options = InternetExplorerOptions()
    options.useCreateProcessApiToLaunchIe()
    val driver = InternetExplorerDriver(options)
    try {
        driver.get("https://google.com/ncr")
        val caps = driver.getCapabilities()
        println(caps)
    } finally {
        driver.quit()
    }
}

2.3.5 - Safari specific functionality

These are capabilities and features specific to Apple Safari browsers.

Unlike Chromium and Firefox drivers, the safaridriver is installed with the Operating System. To enable automation on Safari, run the following command from the terminal:

safaridriver --enable

Options

Capabilities common to all browsers are described on the Options page.

Capabilities unique to Safari can be found at Apple’s page About WebDriver for Safari

Starting a Safari session with basic defined options looks like this:

        SafariOptions options = new SafariOptions();
        driver = new SafariDriver(options);

Check code on GitHub


@pytest.mark.skipif(sys.platform != "win32", reason="requires Windows")

Check code on GitHub

            var options = new SafariOptions();
            var driver = new SafariDriver(options);

Check code on GitHub

    options = Selenium::WebDriver::Options.safari
    @driver = Selenium::WebDriver.for :safari, options: options

Check code on GitHub

let options = new safari.Options(); let driver = await new Builder() .forBrowser('safari') .setSafariOptions(options) .build();

val options = SafariOptions() val driver = SafariDriver(options)

Mobile

Those looking to automate Safari on iOS should look to the Appium project.

2.4 - Waits

WebDriver can generally be said to have a blocking API. Because it is an out-of-process library that instructs the browser what to do, and because the web platform has an intrinsically asynchronous nature, WebDriver does not track the active, real-time state of the DOM. This comes with some challenges that we will discuss here.

From experience, most intermittent issues that arise from use of Selenium and WebDriver are connected to race conditions that occur between the browser and the user’s instructions. An example could be that the user instructs the browser to navigate to a page, then gets a no such element error when trying to find an element.

Consider the following document:

<!doctype html>
<meta charset=utf-8>
<title>Race Condition Example</title>

<script>
  var initialised = false;
  window.addEventListener("load", function() {
    var newElement = document.createElement("p");
    newElement.textContent = "Hello from JavaScript!";
    document.body.appendChild(newElement);
    initialised = true;
  });
</script>

The WebDriver instructions might look innocent enough:

driver.get("file:///race_condition.html");
WebElement element = driver.findElement(By.tagName("p"));
assertEquals(element.getText(), "Hello from JavaScript!");

driver.navigate("file:///race_condition.html")
el = driver.find_element(By.TAG_NAME, "p")
assert el.text == "Hello from JavaScript!"

driver.Navigate().GoToUrl("file:///race_condition.html");
IWebElement element = driver.FindElement(By.TagName("p"));
assertEquals(element.Text, "Hello from JavaScript!");

require 'selenium-webdriver'
driver = Selenium::WebDriver.for :firefox
begin
  # Navigate to URL
  driver.get 'file:///race_condition.html'

  # Get and store Paragraph Text
  search_form = driver.find_element(:css,'p').text

  "Hello from JavaScript!".eql? search_form
ensure
  driver.quit
end

await driver.get('file:///race_condition.html');
const element = driver.findElement(By.css('p'));
assert.strictEqual(await element.getText(), 'Hello from JavaScript!');

driver.get("file:///race_condition.html")
val element = driver.findElement(By.tagName("p"))
assert(element.text == "Hello from JavaScript!")

The issue here is that the default page load strategy used in WebDriver listens for the document.readyState to change to "complete" before returning from the call to navigate. Because the p element is added after the document has completed loading, this WebDriver script might be intermittent. It “might” be intermittent because no guarantees can be made about elements or events that trigger asynchronously without explicitly waiting—or blocking—on those events.

Fortunately, the normal instruction set available on the WebElement interface—such as WebElement.click and WebElement.sendKeys—are guaranteed to be synchronous, in that the function calls will not return (or the callback will not trigger in callback-style languages) until the command has been completed in the browser. The advanced user interaction APIs, Keyboard and Mouse, are exceptions as they are explicitly intended as “do what I say” asynchronous commands.

Waiting is having the automated task execution elapse a certain amount of time before continuing with the next step.

To overcome the problem of race conditions between the browser and your WebDriver script, most Selenium clients ship with a wait package. When employing a wait, you are using what is commonly referred to as an explicit wait.

Explicit wait

Explicit waits are available to Selenium clients for imperative, procedural languages. They allow your code to halt program execution, or freeze the thread, until the condition you pass it resolves. The condition is called with a certain frequency until the timeout of the wait is elapsed. This means that for as long as the condition returns a falsy value, it will keep trying and waiting.

Since explicit waits allow you to wait for a condition to occur, they make a good fit for synchronising the state between the browser and its DOM, and your WebDriver script.

To remedy our buggy instruction set from earlier, we could employ a wait to have the findElement call wait until the dynamically added element from the script has been added to the DOM:

WebDriver driver = new ChromeDriver();
driver.get("https://google.com/ncr");
driver.findElement(By.name("q")).sendKeys("cheese" + Keys.ENTER);
// Initialize and wait till element(link) became clickable - timeout in 10 seconds
WebElement firstResult = new WebDriverWait(driver, Duration.ofSeconds(10))
        .until(ExpectedConditions.elementToBeClickable(By.xpath("//a/h3")));
// Print the first result
System.out.println(firstResult.getText());

from selenium.webdriver.support.wait import WebDriverWait
def document_initialised(driver):
    return driver.execute_script("return initialised")

driver.navigate("file:///race_condition.html")
WebDriverWait(driver, timeout=10).until(document_initialised)
el = driver.find_element(By.TAG_NAME, "p")
assert el.text == "Hello from JavaScript!"

driver = new ChromeDriver();
driver.Url = "https://www.google.com/ncr";
driver.FindElement(By.Name("q")).SendKeys("cheese" + Keys.Enter);

WebDriverWait wait = new WebDriverWait(driver, TimeSpan.FromSeconds(10));
IWebElement firstResult = wait.Until(e => e.FindElement(By.XPath("//a/h3")));

Console.WriteLine(firstResult.Text);

require 'selenium-webdriver'
driver = Selenium::WebDriver.for :firefox
wait = Selenium::WebDriver::Wait.new(:timeout => 10)

def document_initialised(driver)
  driver.execute_script('return initialised')
end

begin
  driver.get 'file:///race_condition.html'
  wait.until{document_initialised driver}
  search_form = driver.find_element(:css,'p').text
  "Hello from JavaScript!".eql? search_form
ensure
  driver.quit
end

const documentInitialised = () =>
    driver.executeScript('return initialised');

await driver.get('file:///race_condition.html');
await driver.wait(() => documentInitialised(), 10000);
const element = driver.findElement(By.css('p'));
assert.strictEqual(await element.getText(), 'Hello from JavaScript!');

driver.get("https://google.com/ncr")
driver.findElement(By.name("q")).sendKeys("cheese" + Keys.ENTER)
// Initialize and wait till element(link) became clickable - timeout in 10 seconds
val firstResult = WebDriverWait(driver, Duration.ofSeconds(10))
      .until(ExpectedConditions.elementToBeClickable(By.xpath("//a/h3")))
// Print the first result
println(firstResult.text)

We pass in the condition as a function reference that the wait will run repeatedly until its return value is truthy. A “truthful” return value is anything that evaluates to boolean true in the language at hand, such as a string, number, a boolean, an object (including a WebElement), or a populated (non-empty) sequence or list. That means an empty list evaluates to false. When the condition is truthful and the blocking wait is aborted, the return value from the condition becomes the return value of the wait.

With this knowledge, and because the wait utility ignores no such element errors by default, we can refactor our instructions to be more concise:

WebElement foo = new WebDriverWait(driver, Duration.ofSeconds(3))
          .until(driver -> driver.findElement(By.name("q")));
assertEquals(foo.getText(), "Hello from JavaScript!");

from selenium.webdriver.support.wait import WebDriverWait

driver.navigate("file:///race_condition.html")
el = WebDriverWait(driver, timeout=3).until(lambda d: d.find_element(By.TAG_NAME,"p"))
assert el.text == "Hello from JavaScript!"

   using (var driver = new FirefoxDriver())
    {
        var foo = new WebDriverWait(driver, TimeSpan.FromSeconds(3))
                        .Until(drv => drv.FindElement(By.Name("q")));
        Debug.Assert(foo.Text.Equals("Hello from JavaScript!"));
    }

  driver.get 'file:///race_condition.html'
  wait = Selenium::WebDriver::Wait.new(:timeout => 10)
  ele = wait.until { driver.find_element(css: 'p')}
  foo = ele.text
  assert_match foo, 'Hello from JavaScript'

let ele = await driver.wait(until.elementLocated(By.css('p')),10000);
let foo = await ele.getText();
assert(foo == "Hello from JavaScript");

driver.get("file:///race_condition.html")
val ele = WebDriverWait(driver, Duration.ofSeconds(10))
            .until(ExpectedConditions.presenceOfElementLocated(By.tagName("p")))
assert(ele.text == "Hello from JavaScript!")

In that example, we pass in an anonymous function (but we could also define it explicitly as we did earlier so it may be reused). The first and only argument that is passed to our condition is always a reference to our driver object, WebDriver. In a multi-threaded environment, you should be careful to operate on the driver reference passed in to the condition rather than the reference to the driver in the outer scope.

Because the wait will swallow no such element errors that are raised when the element is not found, the condition will retry until the element is found. Then it will take the return value, a WebElement, and pass it back through to our script.

If the condition fails, e.g. a truthful return value from the condition is never reached, the wait will throw/raise an error/exception called a timeout error.

Options

The wait condition can be customised to match your needs. Sometimes it is unnecessary to wait the full extent of the default timeout, as the penalty for not hitting a successful condition can be expensive.

The wait lets you pass in an argument to override the timeout:

new WebDriverWait(driver, Duration.ofSeconds(3)).until(ExpectedConditions.elementToBeClickable(By.xpath("//a/h3")));

WebDriverWait(driver, timeout=3).until(some_condition)

new WebDriverWait(driver, TimeSpan.FromSeconds(3)).Until(driver => driver.FindElement(By.Name("q")));

wait = Selenium::WebDriver::Wait.new(:timeout => 10)

wait.until { driver.find_element(:id, 'message').displayed? }

  await driver.wait(until.elementLocated(By.id('foo')), 30000);

WebDriverWait(driver, Duration.ofSeconds(3)).until(ExpectedConditions.elementToBeClickable(By.xpath("//a/h3")))

Expected conditions

Because it is quite a common occurrence to have to synchronise the DOM and your instructions, most clients also come with a set of predefined expected conditions. As might be obvious by the name, they are conditions that are predefined for frequent wait operations.

The conditions available in the different language bindings vary, but this is a non-exhaustive list of a few:

alert is present
element exists
element is visible
title contains
title is
element staleness
visible text

You can refer to the API documentation for each client binding to find an exhaustive list of expected conditions:

Java’s org.openqa.selenium.support.ui.ExpectedConditions class
Python’s selenium.webdriver.support.expected_conditions class
JavaScript’s selenium-webdriver/lib/until module

Implicit wait

There is a second type of wait that is distinct from explicit wait called implicit wait. By implicitly waiting, WebDriver polls the DOM for a certain duration when trying to find any element. This can be useful when certain elements on the webpage are not available immediately and need some time to load.

Implicit waiting for elements to appear is disabled by default and will need to be manually enabled on a per-session basis. Mixing explicit waits and implicit waits will cause unintended consequences, namely waits sleeping for the maximum time even if the element is available or condition is true.

Warning: Do not mix implicit and explicit waits. Doing so can cause unpredictable wait times. For example, setting an implicit wait of 10 seconds and an explicit wait of 15 seconds could cause a timeout to occur after 20 seconds.

An implicit wait is to tell WebDriver to poll the DOM for a certain amount of time when trying to find an element or elements if they are not immediately available. The default setting is 0, meaning disabled. Once set, the implicit wait is set for the life of the session.

WebDriver driver = new FirefoxDriver();
driver.manage().timeouts().implicitlyWait(Duration.ofSeconds(10));
driver.get("http://somedomain/url_that_delays_loading");
WebElement myDynamicElement = driver.findElement(By.id("myDynamicElement"));

driver = Firefox()
driver.implicitly_wait(10)
driver.get("http://somedomain/url_that_delays_loading")
my_dynamic_element = driver.find_element(By.ID, "myDynamicElement")

IWebDriver driver = new ChromeDriver();
driver.Manage().Timeouts().ImplicitWait = TimeSpan.FromSeconds(10);
driver.Url = "http://somedomain/url_that_delays_loading";
IWebElement dynamicElement = driver.FindElement(By.Name("dynamicElement"));

require 'selenium-webdriver'
driver = Selenium::WebDriver.for :firefox
driver.manage.timeouts.implicit_wait = 10

begin
  driver.get 'http://somedomain/url_that_delays_loading'
  search_form = driver.find_element(:id,'dynamic_element')
ensure
  driver.quit
end

(async function(){

// Apply timeout for 10 seconds
await driver.manage().setTimeouts( { implicit: 10000 } );

// Navigate to url
await driver.get('http://somedomain/url_that_delays_loading');

let webElement = driver.findElement(By.id("myDynamicElement"));

}());

val driver = FirefoxDriver()
driver.manage().timeouts().implicitlyWait(Duration.ofSeconds(10))
driver.get("http://somedomain/url_that_delays_loading")
val myDynamicElement = driver.findElement(By.id("myDynamicElement"))

FluentWait

FluentWait instance defines the maximum amount of time to wait for a condition, as well as the frequency with which to check the condition.

Users may configure the wait to ignore specific types of exceptions whilst waiting, such as NoSuchElementException when searching for an element on the page.

// Waiting 30 seconds for an element to be present on the page, checking
// for its presence once every 5 seconds.
Wait<WebDriver> wait = new FluentWait<WebDriver>(driver)
  .withTimeout(Duration.ofSeconds(30))
  .pollingEvery(Duration.ofSeconds(5))
  .ignoring(NoSuchElementException.class);

WebElement foo = wait.until(driver -> {
  return driver.findElement(By.id("foo"));
});

driver = Firefox()
driver.get("http://somedomain/url_that_delays_loading")
wait = WebDriverWait(driver, timeout=10, poll_frequency=1, ignored_exceptions=[ElementNotVisibleException, ElementNotSelectableException])
element = wait.until(EC.element_to_be_clickable((By.XPATH, "//div")))

using (var driver = new FirefoxDriver())
{
  WebDriverWait wait = new WebDriverWait(driver, timeout: TimeSpan.FromSeconds(30))
  {
      PollingInterval = TimeSpan.FromSeconds(5),
  };
  wait.IgnoreExceptionTypes(typeof(NoSuchElementException));

  var foo = wait.Until(drv => drv.FindElement(By.Id("foo")));
}

require 'selenium-webdriver'
driver = Selenium::WebDriver.for :firefox
exception = Selenium::WebDriver::Error::NoSuchElementError

begin
  driver.get 'http://somedomain/url_that_delays_loading'
  wait = Selenium::WebDriver::Wait.new(timeout: 30, interval: 5, message: 'Timed out after 30 sec', ignore: exception)
  foo = wait.until { driver.find_element(id: 'foo')}
ensure
  driver.quit
end

const {Builder, until} = require('selenium-webdriver');

(async function example() {
    let driver = await new Builder().forBrowser('firefox').build();
    await driver.get('http://somedomain/url_that_delays_loading');
    // Waiting 30 seconds for an element to be present on the page, checking
    // for its presence once every 5 seconds.
    let foo = await driver.wait(until.elementLocated(By.id('foo')), 30000, 'Timed out after 30 seconds', 5000);
})();

val wait = FluentWait<WebDriver>(driver)
        .withTimeout(Duration.ofSeconds(30))
        .pollingEvery(Duration.ofSeconds(3))
        .ignoring(NoSuchElementException::class.java)

val foo = wait.until {it.findElement(By.id("foo")) }

2.5 - Web elements

Identifying and working with element objects in the DOM.

The majority of most people’s Selenium code involves working with web elements.

2.5.1 - File Upload

The file upload dialog could be handled using Selenium, when the input element is of type file. An example of it, could be found on this web page- https://the-internet.herokuapp.com/upload We will require to have a file available with us, which we need to upload. The code to upload the file for different programming languages will be as follows -

import java.util.concurrent.TimeUnit;
import org.openqa.selenium.By;
import org.openqa.selenium.WebDriver;
import org.openqa.selenium.chrome.ChromeDriver;
import io.github.bonigarcia.wdm.WebDriverManager;
class fileUploadDoc{
	public static void main(String[] args) {
		WebDriverManager.chromedriver().setup();
		WebDriver driver = new ChromeDriver();
		driver.manage().timeouts().implicitlyWait(10, TimeUnit.SECONDS);
		driver.get("https://the-internet.herokuapp.com/upload");
		//we want to import selenium-snapshot file. 
		driver.findElement(By.id("file-upload")).sendKeys("selenium-snapshot.jpg");
		driver.findElement(By.id("file-submit")).submit();
		if(driver.getPageSource().contains("File Uploaded!")) {
			System.out.println("file uploaded");
		}
		else{
				System.out.println("file not uploaded");
			}
		driver.quit();
	}
}

from selenium import webdriver
from webdriver_manager.chrome import ChromeDriverManager
driver = webdriver.Chrome(ChromeDriverManager().install())
driver.implicitly_wait(10)
driver.get("https://the-internet.herokuapp.com/upload");
driver.find_element(By.ID,"file-upload").send_keys("selenium-snapshot.jpg")
driver.find_element(By.ID,"file-submit").submit()
if(driver.page_source.find("File Uploaded!")):
    print("file upload success")
else:
    print("file upload not successful")
driver.quit()

using System;
using OpenQA.Selenium;
using OpenQA.Selenium.Chrome;

namespace SeleniumDocumentation.SeleniumPRs
{
    class FileUploadExample
    {
        static void Main(String[] args)
        {
            IWebDriver driver = new ChromeDriver();
            try
            {
                // Navigate to Url
                driver.Navigate().GoToUrl("https://the-internet.herokuapp.com/upload");
                driver.FindElement(By.Id("file-upload")).SendKeys("selenium-snapshot.jpg");
                driver.FindElement(By.Id("file-submit")).Submit();
                if (driver.PageSource.Contains("File Uploaded!"))
                {
                    Console.WriteLine("file uploaded");
                }
                else
                {
                    Console.WriteLine("file not uploaded");
                }
                driver.Quit();

            }

            }
}

// Help us by sending a code sample for file upload

// Help us by sending a code sample for file upload

  // Help us by sending a code sample for file upload

So the above example code helps to understand how we can upload a file using Selenium.

2.5.2 - Locator strategies

Ways to identify one or more specific elements in the DOM.

A locator is a way to identify elements on a page. It is the argument passed to the Finding element methods.

Check out our encouraged test practices for tips on locators, including which to use when and why to declare locators separately from the finding methods.

Traditional Locators

Selenium provides support for these 8 traditional location strategies in WebDriver:

Locator	Description
class name	Locates elements whose class name contains the search value (compound class names are not permitted)
css selector	Locates elements matching a CSS selector
id	Locates elements whose ID attribute matches the search value
name	Locates elements whose NAME attribute matches the search value
link text	Locates anchor elements whose visible text matches the search value
partial link text	Locates anchor elements whose visible text contains the search value. If multiple elements are matching, only the first one will be selected.
tag name	Locates elements whose tag name matches the search value
xpath	Locates elements matching an XPath expression

Coding Help

Note: This section could use some updated code examples

of selecting elements using each locator strategy

Check our contribution guidelines and code example formats if you’d like to help.

Relative Locators

Selenium 4 introduces Relative Locators (previously called as Friendly Locators). These locators are helpful when it is not easy to construct a locator for the desired element, but easy to describe spatially where the element is in relation to an element that does have an easily constructed locator.

How it works

Selenium uses the JavaScript function getBoundingClientRect() to determine the size and position of elements on the page, and can use this information to locate neighboring elements.
find the relative elements.

Relative locator methods can take as the argument for the point of origin, either a previously located element reference, or another locator. In these examples we’ll be using locators only, but you could swap the locator in the final method with an element object and it will work the same.

Let us consider the below example for understanding the relative locators.

Available relative locators

Above

If the email text field element is not easily identifiable for some reason, but the password text field element is, we can locate the text field element using the fact that it is an “input” element “above” the password element.

By emailLocator = RelativeLocator.with(By.tagName("input")).above(By.id("password"));

email_locator = locate_with(By.TAG_NAME, "input").above({By.ID: "password"})

var emailLocator = RelativeBy.WithLocator(By.TagName("input")).Above(By.Id("password"));

email_locator = {relative: {tag_name: 'input', above: {id: 'password'}}}

let emailLocator = locateWith(By.tagName('input')).above(By.id('password'));

val emailLocator = RelativeLocator.with(By.tagName("input")).above(By.id("password"))

Below

If the password text field element is not easily identifiable for some reason, but the email text field element is, we can locate the text field element using the fact that it is an “input” element “below” the email element.

By passwordLocator = RelativeLocator.with(By.tagName("input")).below(By.id("email"));

password_locator = locate_with(By.TAG_NAME, "input").below({By.ID: "email"})

var passwordLocator = RelativeBy.WithLocator(By.TagName("input")).Below(By.Id("email"));

password_locator = {relative: {tag_name: 'input', below: {id: 'email'}}}

let passwordLocator = locateWith(By.tagName('input')).below(By.id('email'));

val passwordLocator = RelativeLocator.with(By.tagName("input")).below(By.id("email"))

Left of

If the cancel button is not easily identifiable for some reason, but the submit button element is, we can locate the cancel button element using the fact that it is a “button” element to the “left of” the submit element.

By cancelLocator = RelativeLocator.with(By.tagName("button")).toLeftOf(By.id("submit"));

cancel_locator = locate_with(By.TAG_NAME, "button").to_left_of({By.ID: "submit"})

var cancelLocator = RelativeBy.WithLocator(By.tagName("button")).LeftOf(By.Id("submit"));

cancel_locator = {relative: {tag_name: 'button', left: {id: 'submit'}}}

let cancelLocator = locateWith(By.tagName('button')).toLeftOf(By.id('submit'));

val cancelLocator = RelativeLocator.with(By.tagName("button")).toLeftOf(By.id("submit"))

Right of

If the submit button is not easily identifiable for some reason, but the cancel button element is, we can locate the submit button element using the fact that it is a “button” element “to the right of” the cancel element.

By submitLocator = RelativeLocator.with(By.tagName("button")).toRightOf(By.id("cancel"));

submit_locator = locate_with(By.TAG_NAME, "button").to_right_of({By.ID: "cancel"})

var submitLocator = RelativeBy.WithLocator(By.tagName("button")).RightOf(By.Id("cancel"));

submit_locator = {relative: {tag_name: 'button', right: {id: 'cancel'}}}

let submitLocator = locateWith(By.tagName('button')).toRightOf(By.id('cancel'));

val submitLocator = RelativeLocator.with(By.tagName("button")).toRightOf(By.id("cancel"))

Near

If the relative positioning is not obvious, or it varies based on window size, you can use the near method to identify an element that is at most 50px away from the provided locator. One great use case for this is to work with a form element that doesn’t have an easily constructed locator, but its associated input label element does.

By emailLocator = RelativeLocator.with(By.tagName("input")).near(By.id("lbl-email"));

email_locator = locate_with(By.TAG_NAME, "input").near({By.ID: "lbl-email"})

var emailLocator = RelativeBy.WithLocator(By.tagName("input")).Near(By.Id("lbl-email"));

email_locator = {relative: {tag_name: 'input', near: {id: 'lbl-email'}}}

let emailLocator = locateWith(By.tagName('input')).near(By.id('lbl-email'));

val emailLocator = RelativeLocator.with(By.tagName("input")).near(By.id("lbl-email"));

Chaining relative locators

You can also chain locators if needed. Sometimes the element is most easily identified as being both above/below one element and right/left of another.

By submitLocator = RelativeLocator.with(By.tagName("button")).below(By.id("email")).toRightOf(By.id("cancel"));

submit_locator = locate_with(By.TAG_NAME, "button").below({By.ID: "email"}).to_right_of({By.ID: "cancel"})

var submitLocator = RelativeBy.WithLocator(By.tagName("button")).Below(By.Id("email")).RightOf(By.Id("cancel"));

submit_locator = {relative: {tag_name: 'button', below: {id: 'email'}, right: {id: 'cancel'}}}

let submitLocator = locateWith(By.tagName('button')).below(By.id('email')).toRightOf(By.id('cancel'));

val submitLocator = RelativeLocator.with(By.tagName("button")).below(By.id("email")).toRightOf(By.id("cancel"))

2.5.3 - Finding web elements

Locating the elements based on the provided locator values.

One of the most fundamental aspects of using Selenium is obtaining element references to work with. Selenium offers a number of built-in locator strategies to uniquely identify an element. There are many ways to use the locators in very advanced scenarios. For the purposes of this documentation, let’s consider this HTML snippet:

<ol id="vegetables">
 <li class="potatoes">…
 <li class="onions">…
 <li class="tomatoes"><span>Tomato is a Vegetable</span>…
</ol>
<ul id="fruits">
  <li class="bananas">…
  <li class="apples">…
  <li class="tomatoes"><span>Tomato is a Fruit</span>…
</ul>

First matching element

Many locators will match multiple elements on the page. The singular find element method will return a reference to the first element found within a given context.

Evaluating entire DOM

When the find element method is called on the driver instance, it returns a reference to the first element in the DOM that matches with the provided locator. This value can be stored and used for future element actions. In our example HTML above, there are two elements that have a class name of “tomatoes” so this method will return the element in the “vegetables” list.

WebElement vegetable = driver.findElement(By.className("tomatoes"));

vegetable = driver.find_element(By.CLASS_NAME, "tomatoes")

var vegetable = driver.FindElement(By.ClassName("tomatoes"));

vegetable = driver.find_element(class: 'tomatoes')

const vegetable = driver.findElement(By.className('tomatoes'));

val vegetable: WebElement = driver.findElement(By.className("tomatoes"))

Evaluating a subset of the DOM

Rather than finding a unique locator in the entire DOM, it is often useful to narrow the search to the scope of another located element. In the above example there are two elements with a class name of “tomatoes” and it is a little more challenging to get the reference for the second one.

One solution is to locate an element with a unique attribute that is an ancestor of the desired element and not an ancestor of the undesired element, then call find element on that object:

WebElement fruits = driver.findElement(By.id("fruits"));
WebElement fruit = fruits.findElement(By.className("tomatoes"));

fruits = driver.find_element(By.ID, "fruits")
fruit = fruits.find_element(By.CLASS_NAME,"tomatoes")

IWebElement fruits = driver.FindElement(By.Id("fruits"));
IWebElement fruit = fruits.FindElement(By.ClassName("tomatoes"));

fruits = driver.find_element(id: 'fruits')
fruit = fruits.find_element(class: 'tomatoes')

const fruits = driver.findElement(By.id('fruits'));
const fruit = fruits.findElement(By.className('tomatoes'));

val fruits = driver.findElement(By.id("fruits"))
val fruit = fruits.findElement(By.className("tomatoes"))

Java and C#
WebDriver, WebElement and ShadowRoot classes all implement a SearchContext interface, which is considered a role-based interface. Role-based interfaces allow you to determine whether a particular driver implementation supports a given feature. These interfaces are clearly defined and try to adhere to having only a single role of responsibility.

Optimized locator

A nested lookup might not be the most effective location strategy since it requires two separate commands to be issued to the browser.

To improve the performance slightly, we can use either CSS or XPath to find this element in a single command. See the Locator strategy suggestions in our Encouraged test practices section.

For this example, we’ll use a CSS Selector:

WebElement fruit = driver.findElement(By.cssSelector("#fruits .tomatoes"));

fruit = driver.find_element(By.CSS_SELECTOR,"#fruits .tomatoes")

var fruit = driver.FindElement(By.CssSelector("#fruits .tomatoes"));

fruit = driver.find_element(css: '#fruits .tomatoes')

const fruit = driver.findElement(By.css('#fruits .tomatoes'));

val fruit = driver.findElement(By.cssSelector("#fruits .tomatoes"))

All matching elements

There are several use cases for needing to get references to all elements that match a locator, rather than just the first one. The plural find elements methods return a collection of element references. If there are no matches, an empty list is returned. In this case, references to all fruits and vegetable list items will be returned in a collection.

List<WebElement> plants = driver.findElements(By.tagName("li"));

plants = driver.find_elements(By.TAG_NAME, "li")

IReadOnlyList<IWebElement> plants = driver.FindElements(By.TagName("li"));

plants = driver.find_elements(tag_name: 'li')

const plants = driver.findElements(By.tagName('li'));

val plants: List<WebElement> = driver.findElements(By.tagName("li"))

Get element

Often you get a collection of elements but want to work with a specific element, which means you need to iterate over the collection and identify the one you want.

List<WebElement> elements = driver.findElements(By.tagName("li"));

for (WebElement element : elements) {
    System.out.println("Paragraph text:" + element.getText());
}

from selenium import webdriver
from selenium.webdriver.common.by import By

driver = webdriver.Firefox()

    # Navigate to Url
driver.get("https://www.example.com")

    # Get all the elements available with tag name 'p'
elements = driver.find_elements(By.TAG_NAME, 'p')

for e in elements:
    print(e.text)

using OpenQA.Selenium;
using OpenQA.Selenium.Firefox;
using System.Collections.Generic;

namespace FindElementsExample {
 class FindElementsExample {
  public static void Main(string[] args) {
   IWebDriver driver = new FirefoxDriver();
   try {
    // Navigate to Url
    driver.Navigate().GoToUrl("https://example.com");

    // Get all the elements available with tag name 'p'
    IList < IWebElement > elements = driver.FindElements(By.TagName("p"));
    foreach(IWebElement e in elements) {
     System.Console.WriteLine(e.Text);
    }

   } finally {
    driver.Quit();
   }
  }
 }
}

require 'selenium-webdriver'
driver = Selenium::WebDriver.for :firefox
begin
     # Navigate to URL
  driver.get 'https://www.example.com'

     # Get all the elements available with tag name 'p'
  elements = driver.find_elements(:tag_name,'p')

  elements.each { |e|
    puts e.text
  }
ensure
  driver.quit
end

const {Builder, By} = require('selenium-webdriver');
(async function example() {
    let driver = await new Builder().forBrowser('firefox').build();
    try {
        // Navigate to Url
        await driver.get('https://www.example.com');

        // Get all the elements available with tag 'p'
        let elements = await driver.findElements(By.css('p'));
        for(let e of elements) {
            console.log(await e.getText());
        }
    }
    finally {
        await driver.quit();
    }
})();

import org.openqa.selenium.By
import org.openqa.selenium.firefox.FirefoxDriver

fun main() {
    val driver = FirefoxDriver()
    try {
        driver.get("https://example.com")
        // Get all the elements available with tag name 'p'
        val elements = driver.findElements(By.tagName("p"))
        for (element in elements) {
            println("Paragraph text:" + element.text)
        }
    } finally {
        driver.quit()
    }
}

Find Elements From Element

It is used to find the list of matching child WebElements within the context of parent element. To achieve this, the parent WebElement is chained with ‘findElements’ to access child elements

  import org.openqa.selenium.By;
  import org.openqa.selenium.WebDriver;
  import org.openqa.selenium.WebElement;
  import org.openqa.selenium.chrome.ChromeDriver;
  import java.util.List;

  public class findElementsFromElement {
      public static void main(String[] args) {
          WebDriver driver = new ChromeDriver();
          try {
              driver.get("https://example.com");

              // Get element with tag name 'div'
              WebElement element = driver.findElement(By.tagName("div"));

              // Get all the elements available with tag name 'p'
              List<WebElement> elements = element.findElements(By.tagName("p"));
              for (WebElement e : elements) {
                  System.out.println(e.getText());
              }
          } finally {
              driver.quit();
          }
      }
  }

from selenium import webdriver
from selenium.webdriver.common.by import By

driver = webdriver.Chrome()
driver.get("https://www.example.com")

    # Get element with tag name 'div'
element = driver.find_element(By.TAG_NAME, 'div')

    # Get all the elements available with tag name 'p'
elements = element.find_elements(By.TAG_NAME, 'p')
for e in elements:
    print(e.text)

using OpenQA.Selenium;
using OpenQA.Selenium.Chrome;
using System.Collections.Generic;

namespace FindElementsFromElement {
 class FindElementsFromElement {
  public static void Main(string[] args) {
   IWebDriver driver = new ChromeDriver();
   try {
    driver.Navigate().GoToUrl("https://example.com");

    // Get element with tag name 'div'
    IWebElement element = driver.FindElement(By.TagName("div"));

    // Get all the elements available with tag name 'p'
    IList < IWebElement > elements = element.FindElements(By.TagName("p"));
    foreach(IWebElement e in elements) {
     System.Console.WriteLine(e.Text);
    }
   } finally {
    driver.Quit();
   }
  }
 }
}

  require 'selenium-webdriver'
  driver = Selenium::WebDriver.for :chrome
  begin
    # Navigate to URL
    driver.get 'https://www.example.com'

    # Get element with tag name 'div'
    element = driver.find_element(:tag_name,'div')

    # Get all the elements available with tag name 'p'
    elements = element.find_elements(:tag_name,'p')

    elements.each { |e|
      puts e.text
    }
  ensure
    driver.quit
  end

  const {Builder, By} = require('selenium-webdriver');

  (async function example() {
      let driver = new Builder()
          .forBrowser('chrome')
          .build();

      await driver.get('https://www.example.com');

      // Get element with tag name 'div'
      let element = driver.findElement(By.css("div"));

      // Get all the elements available with tag name 'p'
      let elements = await element.findElements(By.css("p"));
      for(let e of elements) {
          console.log(await e.getText());
      }
  })();

  import org.openqa.selenium.By
  import org.openqa.selenium.chrome.ChromeDriver

  fun main() {
      val driver = ChromeDriver()
      try {
          driver.get("https://example.com")

          // Get element with tag name 'div'
          val element = driver.findElement(By.tagName("div"))

          // Get all the elements available with tag name 'p'
          val elements = element.findElements(By.tagName("p"))
          for (e in elements) {
              println(e.text)
          }
      } finally {
          driver.quit()
      }
  }

Get Active Element

It is used to track (or) find DOM element which has the focus in the current browsing context.

  import org.openqa.selenium.*;
  import org.openqa.selenium.chrome.ChromeDriver;

  public class activeElementTest {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
      WebDriver driver = new ChromeDriver();
      try {
        driver.get("http://www.google.com");
        driver.findElement(By.cssSelector("[name='q']")).sendKeys("webElement");

        // Get attribute of current active element
        String attr = driver.switchTo().activeElement().getAttribute("title");
        System.out.println(attr);
      } finally {
        driver.quit();
      }
    }
  }

  from selenium import webdriver
  from selenium.webdriver.common.by import By

  driver = webdriver.Chrome()
  driver.get("https://www.google.com")
  driver.find_element(By.CSS_SELECTOR, '[name="q"]').send_keys("webElement")

    # Get attribute of current active element
  attr = driver.switch_to.active_element.get_attribute("title")
  print(attr)

    using OpenQA.Selenium;
    using OpenQA.Selenium.Chrome;

    namespace ActiveElement {
     class ActiveElement {
      public static void Main(string[] args) {
       IWebDriver driver = new ChromeDriver();
       try {
        // Navigate to Url
        driver.Navigate().GoToUrl("https://www.google.com");
        driver.FindElement(By.CssSelector("[name='q']")).SendKeys("webElement");

        // Get attribute of current active element
        string attr = driver.SwitchTo().ActiveElement().GetAttribute("title");
        System.Console.WriteLine(attr);
       } finally {
        driver.Quit();
       }
      }
     }
    }

  require 'selenium-webdriver'
  driver = Selenium::WebDriver.for :chrome
  begin
    driver.get 'https://www.google.com'
    driver.find_element(css: '[name="q"]').send_keys('webElement')

    # Get attribute of current active element
    attr = driver.switch_to.active_element.attribute('title')
    puts attr
  ensure
    driver.quit
  end

  const {Builder, By} = require('selenium-webdriver');

  (async function example() {
      let driver = await new Builder().forBrowser('chrome').build();
      await driver.get('https://www.google.com');
      await  driver.findElement(By.css('[name="q"]')).sendKeys("webElement");

      // Get attribute of current active element
      let attr = await driver.switchTo().activeElement().getAttribute("title");
      console.log(`${attr}`)
  })();

  import org.openqa.selenium.By
  import org.openqa.selenium.chrome.ChromeDriver

  fun main() {
      val driver = ChromeDriver()
      try {
          driver.get("https://www.google.com")
          driver.findElement(By.cssSelector("[name='q']")).sendKeys("webElement")

          // Get attribute of current active element
          val attr = driver.switchTo().activeElement().getAttribute("title")
          print(attr)
      } finally {
          driver.quit()
      }
  }

2.5.4 - Interacting with web elements

A high-level instruction set for manipulating form controls.

There are only 5 basic commands that can be executed on an element:

click (applies to any element)
send keys (only applies to text fields and content editable elements)
clear (only applies to text fields and content editable elements)
submit (only applies to form elements)
select (see Select List Elements)

Additional validations

These methods are designed to closely emulate a user’s experience, so, unlike the Actions API, it attempts to perform two things before attempting the specified action.

If it determines the element is outside the viewport, it scrolls the element into view, specifically it will align the bottom of the element with the bottom of the viewport.
It ensures the element is interactable before taking the action. This could mean that the scrolling was unsuccessful, or that the element is not otherwise displayed. Determining if an element is displayed on a page was too difficult to define directly in the webdriver specification, so Selenium sends an execute command with a JavaScript atom that checks for things that would keep the element from being displayed. If it determines an element is not in the viewport, not displayed, not keyboard-interactable, or not pointer-interactable, it returns an element not interactable error.

Click

The element click command is executed on the center of the element. If the center of the element is obscured for some reason, Selenium will return an element click intercepted error.

Send keys

The element send keys command types the provided keys into an editable element. Typically, this means an element is an input element of a form with a text type or an element with acontent-editable attribute. If it is not editable, an invalid element state error is returned.

Here is the list of possible keystrokes that WebDriver Supports.

import org.openqa.selenium.By;
import org.openqa.selenium.Keys;
import org.openqa.selenium.WebDriver;
import org.openqa.selenium.firefox.FirefoxDriver;

public class HelloSelenium {
  public static void main(String[] args) {
    WebDriver driver = new FirefoxDriver();
    try {
      // Navigate to Url
      driver.get("https://google.com");

      // Enter text "q" and perform keyboard action "Enter"
      driver.findElement(By.name("q")).sendKeys("q" + Keys.ENTER);
    } finally {
      driver.quit();
    }
  }
}

from selenium import webdriver
from selenium.webdriver.common.by import By
from selenium.webdriver.common.keys import Keys
driver = webdriver.Firefox()

    # Navigate to url
driver.get("http://www.google.com")

    # Enter "webdriver" text and perform "ENTER" keyboard action
driver.find_element(By.NAME, "q").send_keys("webdriver" + Keys.ENTER)

using (var driver = new FirefoxDriver())
{
  // Navigate to Url
  driver.Navigate().GoToUrl("https://google.com");

  // Enter "webdriver" text and perform "ENTER" keyboard action
  driver.FindElement(By.Name("q")).SendKeys("webdriver" + Keys.Enter);
}

require 'selenium-webdriver'
driver = Selenium::WebDriver.for :firefox
begin
    # Navigate to URL
  driver.get 'https://google.com'

    # Enter "webdriver" text and perform "ENTER" keyboard action
  driver.find_element(name: 'q').send_keys 'webdriver', :return

ensure
  driver.quit
end

const {Builder, By, Key} = require('selenium-webdriver');

(async function example() {
  let driver = await new Builder().forBrowser('firefox').build();

  try {
    // Navigate to Url
    await driver.get('https://www.google.com');

    // Enter text "webdriver" and perform keyboard action "Enter"
    await driver.findElement(By.name('q')).sendKeys('webdriver', Key.ENTER);
  }
  finally {
    await driver.quit();
  }
})();

import org.openqa.selenium.By
import org.openqa.selenium.Keys
import org.openqa.selenium.firefox.FirefoxDriver

fun main() {
  val driver = FirefoxDriver()
  try {
    // Navigate to Url
    driver.get("https://google.com")

    // Enter text "q" and perform keyboard action "Enter"
    driver.findElement(By.name("q")).sendKeys("q" + Keys.ENTER)
  } finally {
    driver.quit()
  }
}

Clear

The element clear command resets the content of an element. This requires an element to be editable, and resettable. Typically, this means an element is an input element of a form with a text type or an element with acontent-editable attribute. If these conditions are not met, an invalid element state error is returned.

import org.openqa.selenium.By;
import org.openqa.selenium.WebDriver;
import org.openqa.selenium.WebElement;
import org.openqa.selenium.chrome.ChromeDriver;

public class clear {
  public static void main(String[] args) {
    WebDriver driver = new ChromeDriver();
    try {
      // Navigate to Url
      driver.get("https://www.google.com");
      // Store 'SearchInput' element
      WebElement searchInput = driver.findElement(By.name("q"));
      searchInput.sendKeys("selenium");
      // Clears the entered text
      searchInput.clear();
    } finally {
      driver.quit();
    }
  }
}

from selenium import webdriver
from selenium.webdriver.common.by import By
driver = webdriver.Chrome()

    # Navigate to url
driver.get("http://www.google.com")
    # Store 'SearchInput' element
SearchInput = driver.find_element(By.NAME, "q")
SearchInput.send_keys("selenium")
    # Clears the entered text
SearchInput.clear()

using OpenQA.Selenium;
using OpenQA.Selenium.Chrome;
using System;

namespace SnipetProjectDelete
{
  class Program
  {
    static void Main(string[] args)
    {
      IWebDriver driver = new ChromeDriver();
      try
      {
        // Navigate to Url
        driver.Navigate().GoToUrl(@"https://www.google.com");
        // Store 'SearchInput' element
        IWebElement searchInput = driver.FindElement(By.Name("q"));
        searchInput.SendKeys("selenium");
        // Clears the entered text
        searchInput.Clear();
      }
      finally
      {
        driver.Quit();
      }
    }
  }
}

require 'selenium-webdriver'
driver = Selenium::WebDriver.for :chrome
begin
    # Navigate to URL
  driver.get 'https://google.com'
    # store 'search_input' element
  search_input = driver.find_element(name: 'q')
  search_input.send_keys('selenium')
    # Clears the entered text
  search_input.clear
ensure
  driver.quit
end

const {Builder, By} = require('selenium-webdriver');
(async function example() {
  let driver = await new Builder().forBrowser('chrome').build();
  try {
    // Navigate to Url
    await driver.get('https://www.google.com');
    // Store 'SearchInput' element
    let searchInput = driver.findElement(By.name('q'));
    await searchInput.sendKeys("selenium");
    // Clears the entered text
    await searchInput.clear();
  }
  finally {
    await driver.quit();
  }
})();

import org.openqa.selenium.By
import org.openqa.selenium.chrome.ChromeDriver
fun main() {
  val driver =  ChromeDriver()
  try {
    // Navigate to Url
    driver.get("https://www.google.com")
    // Store 'searchInput' element
    val searchInput = driver.findElement(By.name("q"))
    searchInput.sendKeys("selenium")
    // Clears the entered text
    searchInput.clear()
  } finally {
    driver.quit()
  }
}

Submit

In Selenium 4 this is no longer implemented with a separate endpoint and functions by executing a script. As such, it is recommended not to use this method and to click the applicable form submission button instead.

2.5.5 - Information about web elements

What you can learn about an element.

There are a number of details you can query about a specific element.

Is Displayed

This method is used to check if the connected Element is displayed on a webpage. Returns a Boolean value, True if the connected element is displayed in the current browsing context else returns false.

This functionality is mentioned in, but not defined by the w3c specification due to the impossibility of covering all potential conditions. As such, Selenium cannot expect drivers to implement this functionality directly, and now relies on executing a large JavaScript function directly. This function makes many approximations about an element’s nature and relationship in the tree to return a value.

// Navigate to the url
driver.get("https://www.selenium.dev/selenium/web/inputs.html");

// Get boolean value for is element display
boolean isEmailVisible = driver.findElement(By.name("email_input")).isDisplayed();

# Navigate to the url
driver.get("https://www.selenium.dev/selenium/web/inputs.html")

# Get boolean value for is element display
is_email_visible = driver.find_element(By.NAME, "email_input").is_displayed()

//Navigate to the url
driver.Url = "https://www.selenium.dev/selenium/web/inputs.html";

//Get boolean value for is element display
Boolean is_email_visible = driver.FindElement(By.Name("email_input")).Displayed

The Selenium Browser Automation Project

1 - Selenium Overview

WebDriver

IDE

Grid

1.1 - Selenium components

Terminology

The Parts and Pieces

Where Frameworks fit in

1.2 - A deeper look at Selenium

Selenium controls web browsers

One interface to rule them all

Tools and support

Who uses Selenium

2 - WebDriver

2.1 - Getting started

2.1.1 - Install a Selenium library

Requirements by language

Maven

Gradle

Pip

Download

Require in project

Packet Manager

.NET CLI

CSProj

Additional considerations

Install manually

Add to project’s gemfile

Install locally

Add to project

Next Step

2.1.2 - Install browser drivers

Four Ways to Use Drivers

1. Selenium Manager (Beta)

2. Driver Management Software

3. The PATH Environment Variable

4. Hard Coded Location

Quick Reference

Next Step

2.1.3 - Write your first Selenium script

Eight Basic Components

1. Start the session

2. Take action on browser

3. Request browser information

4. Establish Waiting Strategy

5. Find an element

6. Take action on element

7. Request element information

8. End the session

Putting everything together

Test Runners

Next Steps

2.1.4 - Upgrade to Selenium 4

Preparing our test code

Capabilities

Before

After

Find element(s) utility methods in Java

Upgrading dependencies

Java

Maven

Gradle

C#

Python

Ruby

JavaScript

Potential errors and deprecation messages

Java

Waits and Timeout

Merging capabilities is no longer changing the calling object

Firefox Legacy

BrowserType

C#

AddAdditionalCapability is deprecated

Python

executable_path has been deprecated, please pass in a Service object

Summary

2.2 - Driver Sessions

Creating Sessions

3. The `PATH` Environment Variable

`BrowserType`

`AddAdditionalCapability` is deprecated

`executable_path has been deprecated, please pass in a Service object`