selenium 2/webdriver support

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since it is currently running under selenium 1, it would be cool to
have webdriver behind the scenes 

Original issue reported on code.google.com by jorge.b...@gmail.com on 18 May 2011 at 3:34

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Could you list benefits end user would get if the library library would use 
Selenium 2 (i.e. WebDriver) APIs instead of Selenium 1 APIs?

Original comment by pekka.klarck on 19 May 2011 at 8:42

• Changed state: Pending

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to list some:
* htmlunit support
* faster
* cleaner api
* does not require rc server

Original comment by jorge.b...@gmail.com on 20 May 2011 at 7:12

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About the benefits:

1) htmlunit support
I agree this is a big win.

2) faster
Didn't know about that. Sounds good.

3) cleaner api
We've never had that big problems with the old API. Learning new one is 
probably a bigger problem.

4) does not require rc server
Sounds good, but... Doesn't it then require browser dependent plugins or 
something like that? Makes creating a generic installation package quite hard.

Problems:

1) Lot of work converting all the old keywords to use the new API. I doubt 
anyone is interested in taking care of that unless there's some kind of a 
bridge API that helps.

2) Non-uniform APIs between browsers. When I studied WebDriver some time ago 
you needed to initialize and also to some extend use different browsers 
differently. Biggest difference were with the HtmlUnit backend. I don't know 
has the situation changed -- please comment here if it has -- but handling 
these differences may turn out to be difficult. We cannot, however, make 
selecting the browser any harder than it is now for the end user.

3) Possible backward incompatible changes. I doubt Selenium 1 and Selenium 2 
(a.k.a. WebDriver) behave 100% identically. Luckily we have pretty 
comprehensive tests for the library so we can easily verify what works and what 
doesn't, but handling possible changes can be challenging.

Because of the possible problems it might actually be better to start a new 
project, something like Selenium2Library, that uses the new WebDriver based 
API. It should have same keywords as the current version to make migrating 
easier, but it could break backwards compatibility in places where keeping it 
is hard or impossible. The project could obviously reuse the old tests, old 
keyword documentation, and also some of the old code.

Original comment by pekka.klarck on 23 May 2011 at 9:14

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could selenium2library be an extension based on the robot-java libraries 
therefore it could be written on java? ;)

Original comment by jorge.b...@gmail.com on 23 May 2011 at 10:07

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It's up to the person interested in implementing such library to select the 
language.

Original comment by pekka.klarck on 23 May 2011 at 10:22

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I am just now getting my team started with Selenium and Robot, so backward 
compatibility for us is not an issue, and we definitely want to be using 
Selenium 2/WebDriver. I suspect there will be a growing number of people in a 
like situation.

Regarding the problems outlined:

1) Since we're just getting started, we wouldn't consider building out a new 
test suite using Selenium 1/RC. So I am interested in writing this library and 
contributing it back to this community. It won't be a trivial amount of work, 
but I don't expect it to be particularly challenging.

2) A fundamental design goal of WebDriver as I understand it is to normalize 
the non-uniform APIs between browsers into a single unified interface so that 
browser implementations can be interchangeable. My brief experience writing 
code with it has validated that.

3) This is a legitimate concern. Some of the existing keywords just simply 
don't apply to Selenium 2/WebDriver (e.g. Start Selenium Server, Stop Selenium 
Server, Add Location Strategy). It's probably very few of your existing 
keywords, but an issue nonetheless.

I agree with you, Pekka, that it probably makes most sense to fork the code and 
start a new project. Reuse of the tests and keyword documentation would be 
really valuable.

My basic approach would be:
- Wrap the robot/keyword library around the Python bindings for Selenium 2.0rc2
- Implement as many of the existing keywords as possible

I want to make sure this team is supportive of the effort and has a chance to 
offer suggestions before getting too far along.

What is the most-favored name for the new project?
- Selenium2Library
- SeleniumWebDriverLibrary

Original comment by r...@tomacfamily.com on 22 Jun 2011 at 11:18

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Very fast comments:

1) Sounds awesome and the core team will definitely support this!

2) I'd prefer Selenium2Library over SeleniumWebDriverLibrary but a more generic 
name like WebLibrary would be fine too.

3) When you get started, please send a note to robotframework-users list. I'm 
sure there are others who are interested and possibly also people who could 
contribute.

Original comment by pekka.klarck on 23 Jun 2011 at 7:24

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Thanks for your support. I will get started soon and send a note to the user 
list as you suggest.

Original comment by r...@tomacfamily.com on 23 Jun 2011 at 8:10

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Has anybody gotten started with this?  I have a requirement from a client to do 
this and I'm about to start, but it makes most since to leverage what is 
already out there.  Anyone?

Original comment by jer...@softworks.com.my on 7 Oct 2011 at 5:32

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This has been intensively discussed on robotframework-users list recently:
http://groups.google.com/group/robotframework-users/browse_thread/thread/7e06c8d
40616fe1d/4b8fabf67d3e40ad

Apparently Ryan Tomac has already done something but there's, AFAIK, nothing 
public available yet. Please join the discussion!

Original comment by pekka.klarck on 7 Oct 2011 at 7:46

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The Selenium2Library utilizing the Webdriver API is now publicly available at 
GitHub:
https://github.com/rtomac/robotframework-selenium2library

So, this project will keep using the RC API, and perhaps we'll should just fade 
this out eventually.

Original comment by janne.t....@gmail.com on 15 Dec 2011 at 6:58

• Changed state: WontFix

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Seleniumhq.org has stopped technical support for Selenium RC, any new bug 
fixes, enhancements on selenium is happening only on selenium webdriver. so it 
will be good to have support for webdriver. And the framework code should 
always be future proof, and should be able to handle new releases od automation 
tool and change in syntax of automation tool, eg: now there is a wide 
difference in change in syntax between selenium RC and Selenium webdriver.

As per the lessons learnt people are struggling to convert there RC scripts to 
webdriver as it requires lots of efforts.

Original comment by ssit.ki...@gmail.com on 20 Mar 2012 at 5:44

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ssit.kiran, please check out the selenium2library: 
https://github.com/rtomac/robotframework-selenium2library, which provides the 
same keywords as SeleniumLibrary, but using the Selenium Webdriver bindings. 

There are some incompatibilites, but not that many, I think.

Original comment by janne.t....@gmail.com on 20 Mar 2012 at 6:51

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I am new in using Selenium Web driver. Tried some different links to download 
selenium2 Library, but kind of stuck what to do next. Can any one help me out 
suggesting the steps. 
I am using Robotframework and RIDE. In order to use selenium Web driver, what 
are the things that I should use? My machine is 64 bit.After I downloaded 
selenim 2 Library from 
https://github.com/rtomac/robotframework-selenium2library/downloads link.and it 
installed the files in my Python27 folder's Lib>Site Packages directory. Is it 
right? after that what should I do? Some guideline would help a lot. Thanks.

Original comment by bfzt...@gmail.com on 1 May 2012 at 3:11

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Selenium2Library related issues should be submitted to that project's issue 
tracker and general questions asked on robotframework-users mailing list.

Original comment by pekka.klarck on 2 May 2012 at 11:41