# selenium-webdriver

Selenium is a browser automation library. Most often used for testing web-applications, Selenium may be used for any task that requires automating interaction with the browser.

## Installation

Install via npm with

    npm install selenium-webdriver

Out of the box, Selenium includes everything you need to work with Firefox. You will need to download additional components to work with the other major browsers. The drivers for Chrome, IE, PhantomJS, and Opera are all standalone executables that should be placed on your PATH. The SafariDriver browser extension should be installed in your browser before using Selenium; we recommend disabling the extension when using the browser without Selenium or installing the extension in a profile only used for testing.

Browser | Component
--- | ---
Chrome | chromedriver(.exe)
Internet Explorer | IEDriverServer.exe
PhantomJS | phantomjs(.exe)
Opera | operadriver(.exe)
Safari | SafariDriver.safariextz

## Usage

The sample below and others are included in the `example` directory. You may also find the tests for selenium-webdriver informative.

    var webdriver = require('selenium-webdriver'),
        By = require('selenium-webdriver').By,
        until = require('selenium-webdriver').until;

    var driver = new webdriver.Builder()
        .forBrowser('firefox')
        .build();

    driver.get('http://www.google.com/ncr');
    driver.findElement(By.name('q')).sendKeys('webdriver');
    driver.findElement(By.name('btnG')).click();
    driver.wait(until.titleIs('webdriver - Google Search'), 1000);
    driver.quit();

### Using the Builder API

The `Builder` class is your one-stop shop for configuring new WebDriver instances. Rather than clutter your code with branches for the various browsers, the builder lets you set all options in one flow. When you call `Builder#build()`, all options irrelevant to the selected browser are dropped:

    var webdriver = require('selenium-webdriver'),
        chrome = require('selenium-webdriver/chrome'),
        firefox = require('selenium-webdriver/firefox');

    var driver = new webdriver.Builder()
        .forBrowser('firefox')
        .setChromeOptions(/* ... */)
        .setFirefoxOptions(/* ... */)
        .build();

Why would you want to configure options irrelevant to the target browser? The `Builder`'s API defines your default configuration. You can change the target browser at runtime through the `SELENIUM_BROWSER` environment variable. For example, the `example/google_search.js` script is configured to run against Firefox. You can run the example against other browsers just by changing the runtime environment

    # cd node_modules/selenium-webdriver
    node example/google_search
    SELENIUM_BROWSER=chrome node example/google_search
    SELENIUM_BROWSER=safari node example/google_search

### The Standalone Selenium Server

The standalone Selenium Server acts as a proxy between your script and the browser-specific drivers. The server may be used when running locally, but it's not recommend as it introduces an extra hop for each request and will slow things down. The server is required, however, to use a browser on a remote host (most browser drivers, like the IEDriverServer, do not accept remote connections).

To use the Selenium Server, you will need to install the JDK and download the latest server from Selenium. Once downloaded, run the server with

    java -jar selenium-server-standalone-2.45.0.jar

You may configure your tests to run against a remote server through the Builder API:

    var driver = new webdriver.Builder()
        .forBrowser('firefox')
        .usingServer('http://localhost:4444/wd/hub')
        .build();

Or change the Builder's configuration at runtime with the `SELENIUM_REMOTE_URL` environment variable:

    SELENIUM_REMOTE_URL="http://localhost:4444/wd/hub" node script.js

You can experiment with these options using the `example/google_search.js` script provided with `selenium-webdriver`.

## Documentation

API documentation is included in the `docs` directory and is also available online from the Selenium project. Addition resources include

- the #selenium channel on freenode IRC
- the selenium-users@googlegroups.com list
- SeleniumHQ documentation

## Contributing

Contributions are accepted either through GitHub pull requests or patches via the Selenium issue tracker. You must sign our Contributor License Agreement before your changes will be accepted.

## Issues

Please report any issues using the Selenium issue tracker. When using the issue tracker

- Do include a detailed description of the problem.
- Do include a link to a gist with any interesting stack traces/logs (you may also attach these directly to the bug report).
- Do include a reduced test case. Reporting "unable to find element on the page" is not a valid report - there's nothing for us to look into. Expect your bug report to be closed if you do not provide enough information for us to investigate.
- Do not use the issue tracker to submit basic help requests. All help inquiries should be directed to the user forum or #selenium IRC channel.
- Do not post empty "I see this too" or "Any updates?" comments. These provide no additional information and clutter the log.
- Do not report regressions on closed bugs as they are not actively monitored for upates (especially bugs that are >6 months old). Please open a new issue and reference the original bug in your report.

## License

Copyright 2009-2015 Software Freedom Conservancy

Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance with the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at

http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0

Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied. See the License for the specific language governing permissions and limitations under the License.