WebDriverManager

This library is aimed to automate the Selenium Webdriver binaries management in runtime for Java.

If you have ever used Selenium Webdriver, you probably know that in order to use some browsers such as Chrome, Internet Explorer, Opera, Microsoft Edge, PhantomJS, or Firefox you need to download a binary which allows WebDriver to handle the browser. In addition, the absolute path to this binary must be set as Java variables, as follows:

System.setProperty("webdriver.chrome.driver", "/absolute/path/to/binary/chromedriver");
System.setProperty("webdriver.opera.driver", "/absolute/path/to/binary/operadriver");
System.setProperty("webdriver.ie.driver", "C:/absolute/path/to/binary/IEDriverServer.exe");
System.setProperty("webdriver.edge.driver", "C:/absolute/path/to/binary/MicrosoftWebDriver.exe");
System.setProperty("phantomjs.binary.path", "/absolute/path/to/binary/phantomjs");
System.setProperty("webdriver.gecko.driver", "/absolute/path/to/binary/geckodriver");

This is quite annoying since it forces you to link directly this binary in your source code. In addition, you have to check manually when new versions of the binaries are released. This library comes to the rescue, performing in an automated way all this dirty job for you.

WebDriverManager is open source, released under the terms of LGPL License 2.1.

Usage

In order to use WebDriverManager in a Maven project, first add the following dependency to your pom.xml (Java 7 or upper required):

<dependency>
	<groupId>io.github.bonigarcia</groupId>
	<artifactId>webdrivermanager</artifactId>
	<version>1.6.1</version>
</dependency>

Then you can let WebDriverManager manage the WebDriver binaries for your application/test. Take a look at this JUnit example which uses Chrome with Selenium WebDriver:

public class ChromeTest {

	private WebDriver driver;

	@BeforeClass
	public static void setupClass() {
		ChromeDriverManager.getInstance().setup();
	}

	@Before
	public void setupTest() {
		driver = new ChromeDriver();
	}

	@After
	public void teardown() {
		if (driver != null) {
			driver.quit();
		}
	}

	@Test
	public void test() {
		// Your test code here
	}

}

Notice that simply adding ChromeDriverManager.getInstance().setup(); WebDriverManager does magic for you:

1. It checks for the latest version of the WebDriver binary
2. It downloads the WebDriver binary if it's not present on your system
3. It exports the required WebDriver Java environment variables needed by Selenium

So far, WebDriverManager supports Chrome, Opera, Internet Explorer, Microsoft Edge, PhantomJS, and Firefox as follows:

ChromeDriverManager.getInstance().setup();
InternetExplorerDriverManager.getInstance().setup();
OperaDriverManager.getInstance().setup();
EdgeDriverManager.getInstance().setup();
PhantomJsDriverManager.getInstance().setup();
FirefoxDriverManager.getInstance().setup();

Examples

Check out WebDriverManager Examples for some JUnit tests utilizing WebDriverManager.

WebDriverManager API

As of version 1.6.0, WebDriverManager exposes its API by means of the builder pattern. This means that given a DriverManger instance (e.g. ChromeDriverManager, FirefoxDriverManager, and so on), their capabilities can be tuned using different methods, namely:

• version() : By default, WebDriverManager tries to download the latest version of a given driver binary. An specific version can be specified using this method.
• forceCache() : By default, WebDriverManager connects to the specific driver repository URL to find out what is the latest version of the binary. This can be avoided forcing to use the latest version form the local repository.
• architecture(Architecture arch) : By default, WebDriverManager would try to use the proper binary for the platform running the test case (i.e. 32-bit or 64-bit). This behavior can be changed by forcing a given architecture: 32-bits (Architecture.x32) or 64-bits (Architecture.x64);
• arch32() : Force to use the 32-bit version of a given driver binary.
• arch64() : Force to use the 64-bit version of a given driver binary.
• driverRepositoryUrl(URL url) : This method allows to change the repository URL in which the binaries are hosted (see next section for default values).
• useTaobaoMirror() : The npm.taobao.org site is a mirror which hosts different software assets. Among them, it hosts chromedriver, geckodriver, operadriver, and phantomjs driver. Therefore, this method can be used in ChromeDriverManager, FirefoxDriverManager, OperaDriverManager, and PhantomJsDriverManager to force to use the taobao.org mirror.
• proxy(String proxy) : Use a HTTP proxy for the Internet connection.

The following table contains some examples:

Example	Description
ChromeDriverManager().getInstance().version("2.26").setup();	Force to use version 2.26 of chromedriver
FirefoxDriverManager().getInstance().arch32().setup();	Force to use the 32-bit version of geckodriver
OperaDriverManager.getInstance().forceCache().setup();	Force to use the cache version of operadriver
PhantomJsDriverManager.getInstance().useTaobaoMirror().setup();	Force to use the taobao.org mirror to download phantomjs driver
ChromeDriverManager().getInstance().proxy("server:port").setup();	Using proxy server:port for the connection

Configuration

Configuration parameters for WebDriverManager are set in the webdrivermanager.properties file:

wdm.targetPath=~/.m2/repository/webdriver
wdm.forceCache=false
wdm.override=false
wdm.timeout=30
wdm.seekErrorRetries=3

wdm.chromeDriverUrl=https://chromedriver.storage.googleapis.com/
wdm.chromeDriverTaobaoUrl=http://npm.taobao.org/mirrors/chromedriver
wdm.chromeDriverExport=webdriver.chrome.driver
wdm.chromeDriverVersion=LATEST

wdm.operaDriverUrl=https://api.github.com/repos/operasoftware/operachromiumdriver/releases
wdm.operaDriverTaobaoUrl=http://npm.taobao.org/mirrors/operadriver
wdm.operaDriverExport=webdriver.opera.driver
wdm.operaDriverVersion=LATEST

wdm.internetExplorerDriverUrl=https://selenium-release.storage.googleapis.com/
wdm.internetExplorerExport=webdriver.ie.driver
wdm.internetExplorerVersion=LATEST

wdm.edgeDriverUrl=https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-edge/tools/webdriver/
wdm.edgeExport=webdriver.edge.driver
wdm.edgeVersion=LATEST

wdm.phantomjsDriverUrl=https://bitbucket.org/ariya/phantomjs/downloads/
wdm.phantomjsDriverTaobaoUrl=http://npm.taobao.org/mirrors/phantomjs
wdm.phantomjsDriverExport=phantomjs.binary.path
wdm.phantomjsDriverVersion=LATEST

wdm.geckoDriverUrl=https://api.github.com/repos/mozilla/geckodriver/releases
wdm.geckoDriverTaobaoUrl=http://npm.taobao.org/mirrors/geckodriver
wdm.geckoDriverExport=webdriver.gecko.driver
wdm.geckoDriverVersion=LATEST

wdm.gitHubTokenName=
wdm.gitHubTokenSecret=

The variable wdm.targetPath is the default folder in which WebDriver binaries are going to be stored. Notice that by default the path of the Maven local repository is used. The URLs to check the latest version of Chrome, Opera, Internet Explorer, Edge, PhantomJS, and Firefox are set using the variables wdm.chromeDriverUrl, wdm.operaDriverExport, wdm.operaDriverUrl, wdm.edgeDriverUrl, wdm.phantomjsDriverUrl, and wdm.geckoDriverUrl.

These properties can be overwritten by Java system properties, for example:

System.setProperty("wdm.targetPath", "/my/custom/path/to/driver/binaries");

... or by command line, for example:

-Dwdm.override=true

By default, WebDriverManager downloads the latest version of the WebDriver binary. But concrete versions of WebDriver binaries can be forced by changing the value of the variables wdm.chromeDriverVersion, wdm.operaDriverVersion, wdm.internetExplorerVersion, or wdm.edgeVersion from its default value (LATEST) to a concrete version. For instance:

-Dwdm.chromeDriverVersion=2.25
-Dwdm.internetExplorerVersion=2.46
-Dwdm.operaDriverVersion=0.2.0
-Dwdm.edgeVersion=3.14366
-Dwdm.phantomjsDriverVersion=2.1.1
-Dwdm.geckoDriverVersion=0.11.1

If no version is specified, WebDriverManager sends a request to the server hosting the binary. In order to avoid this request and check if any binary has been previously downloaded, the key wdm.forceCache can be used.

HTTP Proxy

If you use an HTTP Proxy in your Internet connection, you can configure your settings by exporting the Java environment variable HTTP_PROXY or HTTPS_PROXY using the following notation: my.http.proxy:1234.

Known Issues

Some of the binaries (for Opera and Firefox) are hosted on GitHub. When several consecutive requests are made by WebDriverManager, GitHub servers return an HTTP 403 error response as follows:

Caused by: java.io.IOException: Server returned HTTP response code: 403 for URL: https://api.github.com/repos/operasoftware/operachromiumdriver/releases
	at sun.net.www.protocol.http.HttpURLConnection.getInputStream0(HttpURLConnection.java:1840)
	at sun.net.www.protocol.http.HttpURLConnection.getInputStream(HttpURLConnection.java:1441)
	at sun.net.www.protocol.https.HttpsURLConnectionImpl.getInputStream(HttpsURLConnectionImpl.java:254)
	at io.github.bonigarcia.wdm.BrowserManager.openGitHubConnection(BrowserManager.java:463)
	at io.github.bonigarcia.wdm.OperaDriverManager.getDrivers(OperaDriverManager.java:55)
	at io.github.bonigarcia.wdm.BrowserManager.manage(BrowserManager.java:168)

Caused by: java.io.IOException: Server returned HTTP response code: 403 for URL: https://api.github.com/repos/mozilla/geckodriver/releases
	at sun.net.www.protocol.http.HttpURLConnection.getInputStream0(HttpURLConnection.java:1840)
	at sun.net.www.protocol.http.HttpURLConnection.getInputStream(HttpURLConnection.java:1441)
	at sun.net.www.protocol.https.HttpsURLConnectionImpl.getInputStream(HttpsURLConnectionImpl.java:254)
	at io.github.bonigarcia.wdm.FirefoxDriverManager.getDrivers(FirefoxDriverManager.java:61)
	at io.github.bonigarcia.wdm.BrowserManager.manage(BrowserManager.java:163)

In order to avoid this problem, authenticated requests should be done. The procedure is the following:

1. Create a token/secret pair in your GitHub account
2. Tell WebDriverManager the value of this pair token/secret. To do that you should use the configuration keys wdm.gitHubTokenName and wdm.gitHubTokenSecret. You can pass them as command line Java parameters as follows:

-Dwdm.gitHubTokenName=<your-token-name>
-Dwdm.gitHubTokenSecret=<your-token-secret>

Help

If you have questions on how to use WebDriverManager properly with a special configuration or suchlike, please consider asking a question on stackoverflow and tag it with webdrivermanager-java.

About

WebDriverManager (Copyright © 2015-2017) is a personal project of Boni Garcia licensed under LGPL License 2.1. Comments, questions and suggestions are always very welcome!