chromium-bidi

What is chromium-bidi?

The chromium-bidi npm package provides a BiDi (Bidirectional) protocol implementation for Chromium-based browsers. It allows for remote control of the browser, enabling automation and interaction with web pages through a standardized protocol.

What are chromium-bidi's main functionalities?

Browser Control

This feature allows you to launch a Chromium browser, navigate to a webpage, and interact with it. The code sample demonstrates launching the browser, opening a new page, navigating to 'https://example.com', printing the page title, and closing the browser.

const { chromiumBidi } = require('chromium-bidi');
(async () => {
  const browser = await chromiumBidi.launch();
  const page = await browser.newPage();
  await page.goto('https://example.com');
  console.log(await page.title());
  await browser.close();
})();

Element Interaction

This feature allows you to interact with elements on a webpage. The code sample demonstrates launching the browser, opening a new page, navigating to 'https://example.com', selecting an 'h1' element, printing its text content, and closing the browser.

const { chromiumBidi } = require('chromium-bidi');
(async () => {
  const browser = await chromiumBidi.launch();
  const page = await browser.newPage();
  await page.goto('https://example.com');
  const element = await page.$('h1');
  console.log(await element.textContent());
  await browser.close();
})();

Screenshot Capture

This feature allows you to capture screenshots of web pages. The code sample demonstrates launching the browser, opening a new page, navigating to 'https://example.com', capturing a screenshot, and saving it as 'example.png'.

const { chromiumBidi } = require('chromium-bidi');
(async () => {
  const browser = await chromiumBidi.launch();
  const page = await browser.newPage();
  await page.goto('https://example.com');
  await page.screenshot({ path: 'example.png' });
  await browser.close();
})();

Other packages similar to chromium-bidi

puppeteer

Puppeteer is a Node library which provides a high-level API to control Chrome or Chromium over the DevTools Protocol. It is similar to chromium-bidi in that it allows for browser automation, but it uses the DevTools Protocol instead of the BiDi protocol.

selenium-webdriver

Selenium WebDriver is a collection of language-specific bindings to drive a browser. It is widely used for browser automation and testing. Unlike chromium-bidi, Selenium WebDriver supports multiple browsers and is not limited to Chromium-based browsers.

playwright

Playwright is a Node library to automate Chromium, Firefox, and WebKit with a single API. It offers similar functionalities to chromium-bidi but supports multiple browser engines, making it more versatile for cross-browser testing.

README

WebDriver BiDi for Chromium

CI status

This is an implementation of the WebDriver BiDi protocol with some extensions (BiDi+) for Chromium, implemented as a JavaScript layer translating between BiDi and CDP, running inside a Chrome tab.

Current status can be checked at WPT WebDriver BiDi status.

BiDi+

"BiDi+" is an extension of the WebDriver BiDi protocol. In addition to WebDriver BiDi it has:

Command cdp.sendCommand

CdpSendCommandCommand = {
  method: "cdp.sendCommand",
  params: ScriptEvaluateParameters,
}

CdpSendCommandParameters = {
   method: text,
   params: any,
   session?: text,
}

CdpSendCommandResult = {
   result: any,
   session: text,
}

The command runs the described CDP command and returns the result.

Command cdp.getSession

CdpGetSessionCommand = {
   method: "cdp.sendCommand",
   params: ScriptEvaluateParameters,
}

CdpGetSessionParameters = {
   context: BrowsingContext,
}

CdpGetSessionResult = {
   session: text,
}

The command returns the default CDP session for the selected browsing context.

Events cdp

CdpEventReceivedEvent = {
   method: "cdp.<CDP Event Name>",
   params: CdpEventReceivedParameters,
}

CdpEventReceivedParameters = {
   event: text,
   params: any,
   session: text,
}

The event contains a CDP event.

Field channel

Each command can be extended with a channel:

Command = {
   id: js-uint,
   channel?: text,
   CommandData,
   Extensible,
}

If provided and non-empty string, the very same channel is added to the response:

CommandResponse = {
   id: js-uint,
   channel?: text,
   result: ResultData,
   Extensible,
}

ErrorResponse = {
  id: js-uint / null,
  channel?: text,
  error: ErrorCode,
  message: text,
  ?stacktrace: text,
  Extensible
}

When client uses commands session.subscribe and session.unsubscribe with channel, the subscriptions are handled per channel, and the corresponding channel filed is added to the event message:

Event = {
  channel?: text,
  EventData,
  Extensible,
}

Dev Setup

npm

This is a Node.js project, so install dependencies as usual:

npm install

cargo

We use cddlconv to generate our WebDriverBidi types before building.

1. Install Rust.
2. Run cargo install --git https://github.com/google/cddlconv.git cddlconv

pre-commit.com integration

Refer to the documentation at .pre-commit-config.yaml.

pre-commit install --hook-type pre-push

Starting WebDriver BiDi Server

This will run the server on port 8080:

npm run server

Use the PORT= environment variable or --port= argument to run it on another port:

PORT=8081 npm run server
npm run server -- --port=8081

Use the DEBUG environment variable to see debug info:

DEBUG=* npm run server

Use the DEBUG_DEPTH (default: 10) environment variable to see debug deeply nested objects:

DEBUG_DEPTH=100 DEBUG=* npm run server

Use the CLI argument --headless=false to run browser in headful mode:

npm run server -- --headless=false

Use the CHANNEL=... environment variable or --channel=... argument with one of the following values to run the specific Chrome channel: stable, beta, canary, dev.

The requested Chrome version should be installed.

CHANNEL=dev npm run server
npm run server -- --channel=dev

Use the CLI argument --verbose to have CDP events printed to the console. Note: you have to enable debugging output bidi:mapper:debug:* as well.

DEBUG=bidi:mapper:debug:* npm run server -- --verbose

or

DEBUG=* npm run server -- --verbose

Starting on Linux and Mac

TODO: verify it works on Windows.

You can also run the server by using npm run server. It will write output to the file log.txt:

npm run server -- --port=8081 --headless=false

Running with in other project

Sometimes it good to verify that a change will not affect thing downstream for other packages. There is a useful puppeteer label you can add to any PR to run Puppeteer test with your changes. It will bundle chromium-bidi and install it in Puppeteer project then run that package test.

Running

Unit tests

Running:

npm run unit

E2E tests

The E2E tests are written using Python, in order to learn how to eventually do this in web-platform-tests.

Installation

Python 3.10+ and some dependencies are required:

python -m pip install --user pipenv
pipenv install

Running

The E2E tests require BiDi server running on the same host. By default, tests try to connect to the port 8080. The server can be run from the project root:

npm run e2e  # alias to to e2e:headless
npm run e2e:headful
npm run e2e:headless

Use the PORT environment variable to connect to another port:

PORT=8081 npm run e2e

Updating snapshots

npm run e2e -- --snapshot-update

See https://github.com/tophat/syrupy for more information.

Local http server

E2E tests use local http server pytest-httpserver, which is run automatically with the tests. However, sometimes it is useful to run the http server outside the test case, for example for manual debugging. This can be done by running:

pipenv run local_http_server

...or directly:

python tests/tools/local_http_server.py

Examples

Refer to examples/README.md.

WPT (Web Platform Tests)

WPT is added as a git submodule. To get run WPT tests:

Check out and setup WPT

1. Check out WPT

git submodule update --init

2. Go to the WPT folder

cd wpt

3. Set up virtualenv

Follow the System Setup instructions.

4. Setup hosts file

Follow the hosts File Setup instructions.

4.a On Linux, macOS or other UNIX-like system

./wpt make-hosts-file | sudo tee -a /etc/hosts

4.b On Windows

This must be run in a PowerShell session with Administrator privileges:

python wpt make-hosts-file | Out-File $env:SystemRoot\System32\drivers\etc\hosts -Encoding ascii -Append

If you are behind a proxy, you also need to make sure the domains above are excluded from your proxy lookups.

5. Set BROWSER_BIN

Set the BROWSER_BIN environment variable to a Chrome, Edge or Chromium binary to launch. For example, on macOS:

# Chrome
export BROWSER_BIN="/Applications/Google Chrome Canary.app/Contents/MacOS/Google Chrome Canary"
export BROWSER_BIN="/Applications/Google Chrome Dev.app/Contents/MacOS/Google Chrome Dev"
export BROWSER_BIN="/Applications/Google Chrome Beta.app/Contents/MacOS/Google Chrome Beta"
export BROWSER_BIN="/Applications/Google Chrome.app/Contents/MacOS/Google Chrome"
export BROWSER_BIN="/Applications/Chromium.app/Contents/MacOS/Chromium"

# Edge
export BROWSER_BIN="/Applications/Microsoft Edge Canary.app/Contents/MacOS/Microsoft Edge Canary"
export BROWSER_BIN="/Applications/Microsoft Edge.app/Contents/MacOS/Microsoft Edge"

Run WPT tests

1. Make sure you have Chrome Dev installed

https://www.google.com/chrome/dev/

2. Build Chromedriver BiDi

Oneshot:

npm run build

Continuously:

npm run build --watch

3. Run

npm run wpt -- webdriver/tests/bidi/

Update WPT expectations if needed

UPDATE_EXPECTATIONS=true npm run wpt -- webdriver/tests/bidi/

How does it work?

The architecture is described in the WebDriver BiDi in Chrome Context implementation plan .

There are 2 main modules:

1. backend WS server in src. It runs webSocket server, and for each ws connection runs an instance of browser with BiDi Mapper.
2. front-end BiDi Mapper in src/bidiMapper. Gets BiDi commands from the backend, and map them to CDP commands.

Contributing

The BiDi commands are processed in the src/bidiMapper/commandProcessor.ts. To add a new command, add it to _processCommand, write and call processor for it.

Publish new npm release

Automatic release

We use release-please to automate releases. When a release should be done, check for the release PR in our pull requests and merge it.

Manual release

1. Dry-run

   npm publish --dry-run
   

2. Open a PR bumping the chromium-bidi version number in package.json for review:

   npm version patch -m 'chore: Release v%s' --no-git-tag-version
   

   Instead of patch, use minor or major as needed.

3. After the PR is reviewed, create a GitHub release specifying the tag name matching the bumped version. Our CI then automatically publishes the new release to npm based on the tag name.

Roll into Chromium

This section assumes you already have a Chromium set-up locally, and knowledge on how to submit changes to the repo. Otherwise submit an issue for a project maintainer.

1. Create a new branch in chromium src/.
2. Update the mapper version:

third_party/bidimapper/pull.sh
third_party/bidimapper/build.sh

1. Submit a CL with bug chromedriver:4226.

2. Regenerate WPT expectations or baselines:

   4.1. Trigger a build and test run:

   third_party/blink/tools/blink_tool.py rebaseline-cl --build="linux-blink-rel" --verbose
   

   4.2. Once the test completes on the builder, rerun that command to update the baselines. Update test expectations if there are any crashes or timeouts. Commit the changes (if any), and upload the new patch to the CL.

3. Add appropriate reviewers or comment the CL link on the PR.