webdriver

WebDriver

A lightweight, non-opinionated implementation of the WebDriver and WebDriver BiDi specification including mobile commands supported by Appium

There are tons of Selenium and WebDriver binding implementations in the Node.js world. Every one of them has an opinionated API and recommended way to use it. This binding is the most non-opinionated you will find as it just represents the WebDriver specification and doesn't come with any extra or higher-level abstraction. It is lightweight and comes with support for the WebDriver specification and Appium's Mobile JSONWire Protocol.

The package supports the following protocols:

• WebDriver
• WebDriver Bidi
• Appium
• Chromium (additional Chromedriver specific commands)
• Selenium (additional Selenium WebDriver specific commands)
• Sauce Labs (Sauce Labs specific WebDriver extensions)
• JSONWireProtocol (deprecated)
• Mobile JSONWireProtocol (deprecated)

Commands are added to the client's protocol based on assumptions of provided capabilities. You can find more details about the commands by checking out the @wdio/protocols package. All commands come with TypeScript support.

Install

To install this package from NPM run:

npm i webdriver

WebDriver Example

The following example demonstrates a simple Google Search scenario:

import WebDriver from 'webdriver';

const client = await WebDriver.newSession({
    path: '/',
    capabilities: { browserName: 'firefox' }
})

await client.navigateTo('https://www.google.com/ncr')

const searchInput = await client.findElement('css selector', '#lst-ib')
await client.elementSendKeys(searchInput['element-6066-11e4-a52e-4f735466cecf'], 'WebDriver')

const searchBtn = await client.findElement('css selector', 'input[value="Google Search"]')
await client.elementClick(searchBtn['element-6066-11e4-a52e-4f735466cecf'])

console.log(await client.getTitle()) // outputs "WebDriver - Google Search"

await client.deleteSession()

WebDriver Bidi Example

To connect to the WebDriver Bidi protocol you have to send along a webSocketUrl flag to tell the browser driver to opt-in to the protocol:

import WebDriver from 'webdriver'

const browser = await WebDriver.newSession({
    capabilities: {
        webSocketUrl: true,
        browserName: 'firefox'
    }
})

await browser.sessionSubscribe({ events: ['log.entryAdded'] })

/**
 * returns: {"type":"console","method":"log","realm":null,"args":[{"type":"string","value":"Hello Bidi"}],"level":"info","text":"Hello Bidi","timestamp":1657282076037}
 */
browser.on('log.entryAdded', (entryAdded) => console.log('received %s', entryAdded))

await browser.executeScript('console.log("Hello Bidi")', [])
await browser.deleteSession()

Configuration

To create a WebDriver session call the newSession method on the WebDriver class and pass in your configurations:

import WebDriver from 'webdriver'
const client = await WebDriver.newSession(options)

The following options are available:

capabilities

Defines the capabilities you want to run in your WebDriver session. Note: by default, it will automatically set the webSocketUrl to establish a WebDriver Bidi session, if you don't want this, make sure to set 'wdio:enforceWebDriverClassic': true in your capabilities.

Type: Object
Required: true

logLevel

Level of logging verbosity.

Type: String
Default: info
Options: trace | debug | info | warn | error | silent

protocol

Protocol to use when communicating with the Selenium standalone server (or driver).

Type: String
Default: http Options: http | https

hostname

Host of your WebDriver server.

Type: String
Default: localhost

port

Port your WebDriver server is on.

Type: Number
Default: undefined

path

Path to WebDriver endpoint or grid server.

Type: String
Default: /

queryParams

Query parameters that are propagated to the driver server.

Type: Object Default: undefined

connectionRetryTimeout

Timeout for any WebDriver request to a driver or grid.

Type: Number
Default: 120000

connectionRetryCount

Count of request retries to the Selenium server.

Type: Number
Default: 3

agent

Allows you to use a custom http/https/http2 agent to make requests.

Type: Object
Default:

{
    http: new http.Agent({ keepAlive: true }),
    https: new https.Agent({ keepAlive: true })
}

transformRequest

Function intercepting HTTP request options before a WebDriver request is made to a driver.

Type: (RequestOptions) => RequestOptions
Default: none

transformResponse

Function intercepting HTTP response objects after a WebDriver response has arrived.

Type: (Response, RequestOptions) => Response
Default: none

Changelog

v9.20.0 (2025-09-27)

:rocket: New Feature

• wdio-allure-reporter
  • #14719 Update wdio-allure-reporter for Allure 3 (@todti)

:bug: Bug Fix

• webdriver
  • #14760 fix(webdriver): Fix no retrying requests when unexpected token on responses occurs (like on HTML responses) (@Nyaran)
• wdio-cucumber-framework
  • #14763 feat(cucumber): Fix skipping tests with skip tag using complex regular expressions (@Nyaran)
• wdio-allure-reporter
  • #14723 fix(@wdio/allure-reporter): Encode HTML entities (@sventschui)
• webdriverio
  • #14714 fix(attach-params): user options should override detectBackend (@NaamuKim)
• wdio-utils
  • #14750 feat(utils): Fix reduce function to use the initial value parameter (@Nyaran)

:nail_care: Polish

• wdio-browserstack-service
  • #14783 Exhaustive logging for better capability flow debug (@pranay-v29)
  • #14781 SDK-4104 Updated the build url format for azure pipelines (@pranay-v29)
• wdio-cli, wdio-config
  • #14664 tsConfigPath in wdio.conf (@sh41)
• webdriverio
  • #14744 fix: polish waitForClickable (@wswebcreation)
  • #14745 fix: polish isStable commands (@wswebcreation)
• wdio-browserstack-service, wdio-local-runner
  • #14734 Support added for change in product name:- Observability -> Test Reporting and Analytics v9 (@Tanmay-Bstack)

:memo: Documentation

• Other
  • #14786 Updated refs due to changes in the example-recipes repo (@fpereira1)
  • #14787 Update docs on selector to warn that aria/ selectors can be slow (@fpereira1)
  • #14776 corrected typo in the index page (@alphabetkrish)
• wdio-junit-reporter
  • #14735 docs(@wdio/junit-reporter): update readme (@eglitise)

:house: Internal

• #14748 chore(.nvmrc) upgrade node version to fix continuous release (@NaamuKim)

Committers: 15

• Alex (@todti)
• David Prevost (@dprevost-LMI)
• Edgars Eglītis (@eglitise)
• Erkan Erol (@erkanerol)
• Filype (@fpereira1)
• Luis Zurro (@Nyaran)
• Luke (@NaamuKim)
• Nathan Zhao (@phantomwolf)
• Pranay Varma (@pranay-v29)
• Steve Hall (@sh41)
• Sven (@sventschui)
• Ulises Gascón (@UlisesGascon)
• Wim Selles (@wswebcreation)
• @Tanmay-Bstack
• @alphabetkrish

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