Basics

Introduction

wdman (Webdriver Manager) is an R package that allows the user to manage the downloading/running of third party binaries relating to the webdriver/selenium projects. The package was inspired by a similar node package webdriver-manager.

The checking/downloading of binaries is handled by the binman package and the running of the binaries as processes is handled by the processx package.

The wdman package currently manages the following binaries:

• Selenium standalone binary
• chromedriver
• PhantomJS binary
• geckodriver
• iedriver

Associated with the above are five functions to download/manage the binaries:

• selenium(...)
• chrome(...)
• phantomjs(...)
• gecko(...)
• iedriver(...)

The driver functions take a number of common arguments (verbose, check, retcommand) which we describe:

selServ <- selenium(verbose = TRUE)

## checking Selenium Server versions:

## BEGIN: PREDOWNLOAD

## BEGIN: DOWNLOAD

## BEGIN: POSTDOWNLOAD

## checking chromedriver versions:

## BEGIN: PREDOWNLOAD

## BEGIN: DOWNLOAD

## BEGIN: POSTDOWNLOAD

## checking geckodriver versions:

## BEGIN: PREDOWNLOAD

## BEGIN: DOWNLOAD

## BEGIN: POSTDOWNLOAD

## checking phantomjs versions:

## BEGIN: PREDOWNLOAD

## BEGIN: DOWNLOAD

## BEGIN: POSTDOWNLOAD

selServ$stop()

## TRUE

selServ <- selenium(verbose = FALSE)
selServ$stop()

## TRUE

selCommand <- selenium(retcommand = TRUE, verbose = FALSE, check = FALSE)
selCommand

## [1] "/usr/bin/java -Dwebdriver.chrome.driver='/Users/jkim/Library/Application Support/binman_chromedriver/mac64/80.0.3987.16/chromedriver' -Dwebdriver.gecko.driver='/Users/jkim/Library/Application Support/binman_geckodriver/macos/0.26.0/geckodriver' -Dphantomjs.binary.path='/Users/jkim/Library/Application Support/binman_phantomjs/macosx/2.1.1/phantomjs-2.1.1-macosx/bin/phantomjs' -jar '/Users/jkim/Library/Application Support/binman_seleniumserver/generic/4.0.0-alpha-2/selenium-server-standalone-4.0.0-alpha-2.jar' -port 4567"

chromeCommand <- chrome(retcommand = TRUE, verbose = FALSE, check = FALSE)
chromeCommand

## [1] "/Users/jkim/Library/Application Support/binman_chromedriver/mac64/80.0.3987.16/chromedriver --port=4567 --url-base=wd/hub --verbose"

Selenium Standalone

The selenium function manages the Selenium Standalone binary. It can check for updates at http://selenium-release.storage.googleapis.com/index.html and run the resulting binaries as processes.

selServ <- selenium(verbose = FALSE, check = FALSE)
selServ$process

## PROCESS 'file50e6163b37b8.sh', running, pid 21289.

selServ$log()

## $stderr
## [1] "13:25:51.744 INFO [GridLauncherV3.parse] - Selenium server version: 4.0.0-alpha-2, revision: f148142cf8"         
## [2] "13:25:52.174 INFO [GridLauncherV3.lambda$buildLaunchers$3] - Launching a standalone Selenium Server on port 4567"
## [3] "13:25:54.018 INFO [WebDriverServlet.<init>] - Initialising WebDriverServlet"                                     
## [4] "13:25:54.539 INFO [SeleniumServer.boot] - Selenium Server is up and running on port 4567"                        

## $stdout
## character(0)

selServ$stop()

## TRUE

Chrome Driver

The chrome function manages the Chrome Driver binary. It can check for updates at https://chromedriver.storage.googleapis.com/index.html and run the resulting binaries as processes.

The chrome function runs the Chrome Driver binary as a standalone process. It takes a default port argument port = 4567L. Users can then connect directly to the chrome driver to drive a chrome browser.

Similarly to the selenium function, the chrome function returns a list of four functions and a handle to the underlying running process.

cDrv <- chrome(verbose = FALSE, check = FALSE)
cDrv$process

## PROCESS 'file534c4e940dd8.sh', running, pid 21386.

cDrv$log()

## $stderr
## character(0)

## $stdout
## [1] "Starting ChromeDriver 80.0.3987.16 (320f6526c1632ad4f205ebce69b99a062ed78647-refs/branch-heads/3987@{#185}) on port 4567"
## [2] "Only local connections are allowed."                                                                                     
## [3] "Please protect ports used by ChromeDriver and related test frameworks to prevent access by malicious code."  

cDrv$stop()

## TRUE

PhantomJS

The phantomjs function manages the PhantomJS binary. It can check for updates at https://bitbucket.org/ariya/phantomjs/downloads and run the resulting binaries as processes.

The phantomjs function runs the PhantomJS binary as a standalone process in webdriver mode. It takes a default port argument port = 4567L. Users can then connect directly to the “ghostdriver” to drive a PhantomJS browser. Currently the default version is set to version = "2.1.1". At the time of writing 2.5.0-beta has been released. It currently does not have an up-to-date version of ghostdriver associated with it. For this reason it will be unstable/unpredictable to use it in webdriver mode.

Similarly to the selenium function, the phantomjs function returns a list of four functions and a handle to the underlying running process.

pjsDrv <- phantomjs(verbose = FALSE, check = FALSE)
pjsDrv$process

## PROCESS 'file5394b74d790.sh', running, pid 21443.

pjsDrv$log()

## $stderr
## character(0)

## $stdout
## [1] "[INFO  - 2020-01-31T21:32:04.538Z] GhostDriver - Main - running on port 4567"

pjsDrv$stop()

## TRUE

Gecko Driver

The gecko function manages the Gecko Driver binary. It can check for updates at https://github.com/mozilla/geckodriver/releases and run the resulting binaries as processes.

The gecko function runs the Gecko Driver binary as a standalone process. It takes a default port argument port = 4567L. Users can then connect directly to the gecko driver to drive a firefox browser. Currently the default version is set to version = "2.1.1".

A very IMPORTANT point to note is that geckodriver implements the W3C webdriver protocol which as at the time of writing is not finalised. Currently packages such as RSelenium implement the JSONwireprotocol which whilst similar expects different return from the underlying driver.

The geckodriver implementation like the W3C webdriver specification is incomplete at this point in time.

Similarly to the selenium function, the gecko function returns a list of four functions and a handle to the underlying running process.

gDrv <- gecko(verbose = FALSE, check = FALSE)
gDrv$process

## PROCESS 'file53946017eccb.sh', running, pid 21458.

gDrv$log()

## $stderr
## character(0)

## $stdout
## character(0)

gDrv$stop()

## TRUE

IE Driver

The iedriver function manages the Internet Explorer Driver binary. It can check for updates at http://selenium-release.storage.googleapis.com/index.html and run the resulting binaries as processes (the iedriver is distributed currently with the Selenium standalone binary amongst other files).

The chrome function runs the Chrome Driver binary as a standalone process. It takes a default port argument port = 4567L. Users can then connect directly to the chrome driver to drive a chrome browser.

Please note that additional settings are required to drive an Internet Explorer browser. Security settings and zoom level need to be set correctly in the browser. The author of this document needed to set a registry entry (for ie 11). This is outlined at https://github.com/SeleniumHQ/selenium/wiki/InternetExplorerDriver in the required configuration section.

Similarly to the selenium function the gecko function returns a list of four functions and a handle to the underlying running process.

ieDrv <- iedriver(verbose = FALSE, check = FALSE)
ieDrv$process

## Process Handle
## command   : C:\Users\john\AppData\Local\binman\binman_iedriverserver\win64\3.0.0\IEDriverServer.exe /port=4567 /log-level=FATAL /log-file=C:\Users\john\AppData\Local\Temp\RtmpqSdw94\file5247395f2a.txt
## system id : 7484
## state     : running

ieDrv$log()

## $stderr
## character(0)
## 
## $stdout
## [1] "Started InternetExplorerDriver server (64-bit)"                                          
## [2] "3.0.0.0"                                                                                 
## [3] "Listening on port 4567"                                                                  
## [4] "Log level is set to FATAL"                                                               
## [5] "Log file is set to C:\\Users\\john\\AppData\\Local\\Temp\\RtmpqSdw94\\file5247395f2a.txt"
## [6] "Only local connections are allowed"

ieDrv$stop()

## [1] TRUE

Issues and problems

If you experience issues or problems running one of the drivers/functions, please try running the command in a terminal on your OS initially. You can access the command to run by using the retcommand argument in each of the main package functions. If you continue to have problems, consider posting an issue at https://github.com/ropensci/wdman/issues