appium-chromium-driver

appium-chromium-driver

This is an Appium driver for Chromium-based browsers (like Chrome).

Why does this project exist?

It is already possible to automate Chromium browsers with Chromedriver. In fact, this Appium driver uses Chromedriver under the hood! It is not any kind of fundamentally new or different technology. The advantages of using this project are:

• Automate Chromium browsers using the Appium server you already have, simply by including this Appium driver.
• No need to download specific versions of Chromedriver manually. This driver takes care of downloading a version of Chromedriver appropriate for the version of the browser under test.
• Take advantage of the ecosystem of Appium plugins and features (e.g., image analysis) not available via Chromedriver on its own.

Installation

It's assumed that you have an Appium server (version 2.x+) installed, and that you have a browser compatible with Chromedriver ready to automate on your system. The recommended installation method is to use the Appium extension CLI to install the driver:

appium driver install chromium

Note MSEdge browser support started since v1.1.0

Usage

To start an automation session targeting this driver, construct a set of options/capabilities in any WebDriver client that (minimally) includes the following:

Capability	Value
platformName	One of macOS, mac, Linux, or Windows (depending on your system)
browserName	browserName to the running WebDriver process. For example, chrome or chromium is for chromedriver, MicrosoftEdge or msedge is for msedge driver.
appium:automationName	Chromium

Use these capabilities to start a new session. (Refer to the documentation for your WebDriver client for the particular syntax used to start a session in that client).

At this point, all WebDriver commands are proxied directly to WebDriver. This driver does not implement any additional commands. Refer to the Chromedriver documentation or the WebDriver specification for a list of the available automation commands.

Note Supported WebDriver kinds are chromedriver for Chrome and Chromium browsers and msedgedriver for MSEdge.

Capabilities

In addition to all of the Chromedriver capabilities (nested underneath goog:chromeOptions for Chrome and Chromium or ms:edgeOptions for MSEdge), this driver supports the following:

Capability	Description	Default Value
appium:chromedriverPort	The port to start WebDriver process on	9515
appium:executable	The absolute path to a WebDriver binary executable. If set, the driver will use that path instead of its own WebDriver
appium:executableDir	A directory within which is found any number of WebDriver binaries. If set, the driver will search this directory for WebDrivers of the appropriate version to use for your browser
appium:verbose	Set to true to add the --verbose flag when starting WebDriver	false
appium:logPath	The path to use with the --log-path parameter directing WebDriver to write its log to that path, if set
appium:disableBuildCheck	Set to true to add the --disable-build-check flag when starting WebDriver	false
appium:autodownloadEnabled	Set to false to disable automatic downloading of Chromedrivers.	true
appium:useSystemExecutable	Set to true to use the version of WebDriver bundled with this driver, rather than attempting to download a new one based on the version of the browser under test	false

Note msedgedriver support is limited. appium:autodownloadEnabled does not work for the driver, thus appium:executable is necessary to automate MSEdge browser properly.

Scripts

install-chromedriver

This script is used to install the given or latest stable version of chromedriver (113+) from Chrome for testing with appium driver run chromium install-chromedriver. Please read Version selection document to find a proper chromedriver manually that is good for your current browser.

Below environment arguments are available:

• CHROMEDRIVER_EXECUTABLE_DIR
  • Let the command to download chromedrivers in the given directory. Defaults to node_modules/appium-chromedriver/chromedriver in appium-chromium-driver package.
  • i.e.
    • macOS/Linux: CHROMEDRIVER_EXECUTABLE_DIR=/path/to/dir appium driver run chromium install-chromedriver
    • Windows: $env:CHROMEDRIVER_EXECUTABLE_DIR='C:\path\to\folder'; appium driver run chromium install-chromedriver; Remove-Item Env:\CHROMEDRIVER_EXECUTABLE_DIR
• CHROMEDRIVER_VERSION
  • Let the command download a specific version.
  • i.e.
    • macOS/Linux: CHROMEDRIVER_VERSION=131.0.6778.3 appium driver run chromium install-chromedriver
    • Windows: $env:CHROMEDRIVER_VERSION='131.0.6778.3'; appium driver run chromium install-chromedriver; Remove-Item Env:\CHROMEDRIVER_VERSION
• CHROMELABS_URL
  • Let the command get the list of available chromedrivers from the given mirror instead of the default one.

Contributing

Contributions to this project are welcome! Feel free to submit a PR on GitHub.

To get set up with a working developer environment, clone the project then run:

npm install

To build the code once:

npm run build

To rebuild the code anytime a file is saved:

npm run dev

Before committing any code, please make sure to run:

npm run lint
npm run test:ci

And make sure everything passes!

More developer scripts can be found in package.json.