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Installation

6:32 with Craig Dennis and Nathan Menge

In this video we will cover the two part of installing Selenium WebDriver; Installing the WebDriver binding for your desired language and installing the browser driver for your operating system.

Teacher's Notes
Video Transcript
Downloads

IMPORTANT UPDATE

The Node selenium-webdriver has gone to a new alpha version that changes the API.
To follow along with this course make sure you install selenium-webdriver like this:

npm install selenium-webdriver@3

Fixing Permissions Errors

If you get a permissions (EACCESS) error when running npm install, re-running the command with sudo will get it working. But you should only do this with trusted packages! If a package contains malicious code, running it with sudo could allow an attacker to take over your system.

Instead, consider installing Node using a version manager, which will allow you to install packages globally without using sudo. You can read more about this solution here.

Installation Instructions

Learn More

[MUSIC] 0:00

Okay, so let's get this party started. 0:04

Selenium-WebDriver has all sorts of client level APIs that let you use just about any 0:06

programming language that you can think of. 0:10

Now with that in mind, we decided to use JavaScript since you're driving a web 0:13

browser and JavaScript is the language of the web. 0:18

We figured, chances are you probably have some level of 0:21

experience with JavaScript, if you're here. 0:24

Now in order to get started, 0:26

we're going to need to make sure that you have Node installed. 0:28

If you've never used Node before, don't fear. 0:31

Node is a JavaScript run-time that allows you to write JavaScript applications and 0:33

run them locally as well as on a server. 0:36

Let's make sure that we've got everything installed. 0:38

All right, so I'm running on a Mac and I've got my terminal open here. 0:42

So let's see if I have Node installed. 0:46

So I'm gonna type, which node, and it turns out that I do. 0:48

On a PC you would type where node. 0:54

Now if you didn't find Node installed, check the teachers notes for 0:56

installation instructions. 0:59

I'm just gonna verify what version of Node I'm running, so I'm gonna have node- v, 1:01

and you'll see here that I'm running version 6.9.4. 1:04

As long as we're on version 6, and that's that first number here. 1:09

This is the major release, 6, or greater we'll be good to go. 1:13

If you aren't there, 1:17

get a newer versioned installed using the instructions in the teacher's notes. 1:18

Okay, so now I wanna make a directory or 1:21

folder to store the code that we'll be working on in this course. 1:24

I'm gonna call it Selenium basics. 1:27

I'm gonna say, mkdir selenium-basics. 1:28

And I'm gonna change to that directory. 1:32

So change directory, selenium-basics. 1:36

Okay, and since we have Node installed, we also have NPM. 1:39

NPM stands for the Node Package Manager and 1:43

it allows you to install Node based modules. 1:45

So, we want to install one of those open source modules, the one for Selenium. 1:48

So we'll type npm install selenium-webdriver. 1:52

It's gonna go and download that stuff and it's gonna give us some warnings. 2:00

And basically, these warnings are just because we haven't yet 2:04

made our folder a package. 2:06

But what it did do was install a bunch of Node modules, and 2:09

we can see those if we do ls. 2:13

We can list those files in the Node modules directory and 2:15

you'll see what was required to get Selenium up and running. 2:18

So now that we have the package installed, 2:22

we actually need to install the web driver, the browser specific web driver. 2:24

Let's start with the Chrome version. 2:28

So we'll install this globally, so you don't need to do it over and over again. 2:29

So we'll say, npm install chromedriver -g. 2:33

And that's going to install it globally. 2:37

And you need to have the right permissions. 2:40

I'm gonna show you what happens if you don't, and 2:42

then I'll show you how to fix it. 2:43

So see it says I don't have it. 2:47

It says, please try running this command as root administration. 2:48

So I'm just gonna do a sudo npm. 2:51

I'm gonna say, sudo which is basically will log 2:53

you in as an administrator to put that in there. 2:57

So, I will do that, put it as password. 3:01

There we go. 3:11

And so now that we've got it installed, 3:12

we can type chromedriver --version, just to make sure it's working. 3:13

Awesome. 3:19

In the course, 3:20

DOM Scripting By Example, there is an RSVP web application that's built. 3:21

Now, I've attached the workspace here. 3:26

Go ahead and launch that workspace. 3:28

So, this is what my workspace looks like. 3:30

I'm gonna go ahead and preview, and then I'm gonna click this 3:34

eye here to open up the preview, so it will launch the webpage for us. 3:37

And I'm gonna use this just a little bit so you can kinda see how things work. 3:42

So I'm gonna type, Nathan. 3:44

I'm gonna submit. 3:46

I'm also gonna add Elizabeth here. 3:48

There we go. 3:50

So you see that they start adding up. 3:52

And you can confirm or not confirm, or you can edit the person's name. 3:54

So add Nathan Menge. 3:57

So as you can see, there's a little bit of interactivity that's going on here, and 3:59

we can automate it. 4:02

What do you say we give it a try? 4:03

So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna copy the URL. 4:05

Now, note here that this URL is pretty intense, 4:07

so yours is gonna look different than mine. 4:09

So I'm gonna copy that and I'm gonna flip back over to my terminal. 4:12

Node offers what is known as a REPL, or a read eval print loop. 4:16

It basically let's you build a program up as you go, and it's wonderful for 4:19

this sort of exploratory coding. 4:23

To start it, you just type Node. 4:25

So, first, we need to grab the module that we installed. 4:28

So this is just JavaScript here, right? 4:32

So I'm gonna do a const selenium, so this is the name of the package. 4:34

And we'll say, 4:37

require selenium-webdriver. 4:40

Okay, and the package lets you use the builder design 4:45

pattern to configure the driver that you exactly want. 4:50

You called build on the builder and it returns the right version. 4:53

Here, let's do it. 4:56

So I'll say const, we'll call our variable driver. 4:57

And we'll make a new selenium, lowercased, .Builder, okay? 5:00

This is the pattern here, so you describe what it is that you want. 5:06

For right now, we just wanna have Chrome, so we'll say, forBrowser, chrome. 5:10

And then after you've set up all of your options, you call build on it and 5:15

that's how the pattern works. 5:18

So we'll do build, all right. 5:19

And now, I am going to set up a URL and 5:22

then I'm gonna paste, and that's the Treehouse preview that was up from before. 5:26

Okay, so I'm gonna do driver.get, cuz that's how you go get the webpage, url. 5:32

And it put back a whole bunch of information, but 5:38

it should have also opened up a new RSVP app. 5:44

And you'll see it says that Chrome is being controlled by 5:49

automated test software. 5:52

And also, it's made a new Chrome instance. 5:53

So I have Chrome up and running, but it's a new Chrome one over here. 5:56

And that's nice [LAUGH] because as you start doing these, 5:58

they'll start opening more and more. 6:01

And you'll probably wanna know this because eventually you'll wanna close it, 6:03

so you say driver.close. 6:06

And then you'll see that it's gone. 6:11

And to get out of the REPL, you can press CTRL + D. 6:13

Now don't worry, the REPL does a great job of ruining what you just typed in, so 6:20

you won't need to type all that again. 6:23

Okay, why don't you take a quick break and come back here and 6:26

we'll get started learning the basics of how to manipulate these elements. 6:29

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