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Troubleshooting Assistance

How to get manage WebDriver problems.

It is not always obvious the root cause of errors in Selenium.

  1. The most common Selenium-related error is a result of poor synchronization. Read about Waiting Strategies. If you aren’t sure if it is a synchronization strategy you can try temporarily hard coding a large sleep where you see the issue, and you’ll know if adding an explicit wait can help.

  2. Note that many errors that get reported to the project are actually caused by issues in the underlying drivers that Selenium sends the commands to. You can rule out a driver problem by executing the command in multiple browsers.

  3. If you have questions about how to do things, check out the Support options for ways get assistance.

  4. If you think you’ve found a problem with Selenium code, go ahead and file a Bug Report on GitHub.

1 - Understanding Common Errors

How to get deal with various problems in your Selenium code.

Invalid Selector Exception

CSS and XPath Selectors are sometimes difficult to get correct.

Likely Cause

The CSS or XPath selector you are trying to use has invalid characters or an invalid query.

Possible Solutions

Run your selector through a validator service:

Or use a browser extension to get a known good value:

No Such Element Exception

The element can not be found at the exact moment you attempted to locate it.

Likely Cause

  • You are looking for the element in the wrong place (perhaps a previous action was unsuccessful).
  • You are looking for the element at the wrong time (the element has not shown up in the DOM, yet)
  • The locator has changed since you wrote the code

Possible Solutions

  • Make sure you are on the page you expect to be on, and that previous actions in your code completed correctly
  • Make sure you are using a proper Waiting Strategy
  • Update the locator with the browser’s devtools console or use a browser extension like:

Stale Element Reference Exception

An element goes stale when it was previously located, but can not be currently accessed. Elements do not get relocated automatically; the driver creates a reference ID for the element and has a particular place it expects to find it in the DOM. If it can not find the element in the current DOM, any action using that element will result in this exception.

Common Causes

This can happen when:

  • You have refreshed the page, or the DOM of the page has dynamically changed.
  • You have navigated to a different page.
  • You have switched to another window or into or out of a frame or iframe.

Common Solutions

The DOM has changed

When the page is refreshed or items on the page have moved around, there is still an element with the desired locator on the page, it is just no longer accessible by the element object being used, and the element must be relocated before it can be used again. This is often done in one of two ways:

  • Always relocate the element every time you go to use it. The likelihood of the element going stale in the microseconds between locating and using the element is small, though possible. The downside is that this is not the most efficient approach, especially when running on a remote grid.

  • Wrap the Web Element with another object that stores the locator, and caches the located Selenium element. When taking actions with this wrapped object, you can attempt to use the cached object if previously located, and if it is stale, exception can be caught, the element relocated with the stored locator, and the method re-tried. This is more efficient, but it can cause problems if the locator you’re using references a different element (and not the one you want) after the page has changed.

The Context has changed

Element objects are stored for a given context, so if you move to a different context — like a different window or a different frame or iframe — the element reference will still be valid, but will be temporarily inaccessible. In this scenario, it won’t help to relocate the element, because it doesn’t exist in the current context. To fix this, you need to make sure to switch back to the correct context before using the element.

The Page has changed

This scenario is when you haven’t just changed contexts, you have navigated to another page and have destroyed the context in which the element was located. You can’t just relocate it from the current context, and you can’t switch back to an active context where it is valid. If this is the reason for your error, you must both navigate back to the correct location and relocate it.

Invalid SessionId Exception

Sometimes the session you’re trying to access is different than what’s currently available

Likely Cause

This usually occurs when the session has been deleted (e.g. driver.quit()) or if the session has changed, like when the last tab/browser has closed (e.g. driver.close())

Possible Solutions

Check your script for instances of driver.close() and driver.quit(), and any other possible causes of closed tabs/browsers. It could be that you are locating an element before you should/can.

1.1 - Unable to Locate Driver Error

Troubleshooting missing path to driver executable.

Historically, this is the most common error beginning Selenium users get when trying to run code for the first time:

The path to the driver executable must be set by the webdriver.chrome.driver system property; for more information, see https://chromedriver.chromium.org/. The latest version can be downloaded from https://chromedriver.chromium.org/downloads
The executable chromedriver needs to be available in the path.
The file geckodriver does not exist. The driver can be downloaded at https://github.com/mozilla/geckodriver/releases"
Unable to locate the chromedriver executable;

Likely cause

Through WebDriver, Selenium supports all major browsers. In order to drive the requested browser, Selenium needs to send commands to it via an executable driver. This error means the necessary driver could not be found by any of the means Selenium attempts to use.

Possible solutions

There are several ways to ensure Selenium gets the driver it needs.

Use the latest version of Selenium

As of Selenium 4.6, Selenium downloads the correct driver for you. You shouldn’t need to do anything. If you are using the latest version of Selenium and you are getting an error, please turn on logging and file a bug report with that information.

If you want to read more information about how Selenium manages driver downloads for you, you can read about the Selenium Manager.

Use the PATH environment variable

This option first requires manually downloading the driver.

This is a flexible option to change location of drivers without having to update your code, and will work on multiple machines without requiring that each machine put the drivers in the same place.

You can either place the drivers in a directory that is already listed in PATH, or you can place them in a directory and add it to PATH.

To see what directories are already on PATH, open a Terminal and execute:

echo $PATH

If the location to your driver is not already in a directory listed, you can add a new directory to PATH:

echo 'export PATH=$PATH:/path/to/driver' >> ~/.bash_profile
source ~/.bash_profile

You can test if it has been added correctly by checking the version of the driver:

chromedriver --version

To see what directories are already on PATH, open a Terminal and execute:

echo $PATH

If the location to your driver is not already in a directory listed, you can add a new directory to PATH:

echo 'export PATH=$PATH:/path/to/driver' >> ~/.zshenv
source ~/.zshenv

You can test if it has been added correctly by checking the version of the driver:

chromedriver --version

To see what directories are already on PATH, open a Command Prompt and execute:

echo %PATH%

If the location to your driver is not already in a directory listed, you can add a new directory to PATH:

setx PATH "%PATH%;C:\WebDriver\bin"

You can test if it has been added correctly by checking the version of the driver:

chromedriver.exe --version

Specify the location of the driver

If you cannot upgrade to the latest version of Selenium, you do not want Selenium to download drivers for you, and you can’t figure out the environment variables, you can specify the location of the driver in the Service object.

You first need to download the desired driver, then create an instance of the applicable Service class and set the path.

Specifying the location in the code itself has the advantage of not needing to figure out Environment Variables on your system, but has the drawback of making the code less flexible.

Driver management libraries

Before Selenium managed drivers itself, other projects were created to do so for you.

If you can’t use Selenium Manager because you are using an older version of Selenium (please upgrade), or need an advanced feature not yet implemented by Selenium Manager, you might try one of these tools to keep your drivers automatically updated:

Download the driver

BrowserSupported OSMaintained byDownloadIssue Tracker
Chromium/ChromeWindows/macOS/LinuxGoogleDownloadsIssues
FirefoxWindows/macOS/LinuxMozillaDownloadsIssues
EdgeWindows/macOS/LinuxMicrosoftDownloadsIssues
Internet ExplorerWindowsSelenium ProjectDownloadsIssues
SafarimacOS High Sierra and newerAppleBuilt inIssues

Note: The Opera driver no longer works with the latest functionality of Selenium and is currently officially unsupported.

2 - Logging Selenium commands

Getting information about Selenium execution.

Turning on logging is a valuable way to get extra information that might help you determine why you might be having a problem.

Getting a logger

Java logs are typically created per class. You can work with the default logger to work with all loggers. To filter out specific classes, see Filtering

Get the root logger:

        Logger logger = Logger.getLogger("");
View full example on GitHub

Java Logging is not exactly straightforward, and if you are just looking for an easy way to look at the important Selenium logs, take a look at the Selenium Logger project

Python logs are typically created per module. You can match all submodules by referencing the top level module. So to work with all loggers in selenium module, you can do this:

    logger = logging.getLogger('selenium')
View full example on GitHub

.NET logger is managed with a static class, so all access to logging is managed simply by referencing Log from the OpenQA.Selenium.Internal.Logging namespace.

If you want to see as much debugging as possible in all the classes, you can turn on debugging globally in Ruby by setting $DEBUG = true.

For more fine-tuned control, Ruby Selenium created its own Logger class to wrap the default Logger class. This implementation provides some interesting additional features. Obtain the logger directly from the #loggerclass method on the Selenium::WebDriver module:

Selenium v4.10

    logger = Selenium::WebDriver.logger
View full example on GitHub
const logging = require('selenium-webdriver/lib/logging')
logger = logging.getLogger('webdriver')

Logger level

Logger level helps to filter out logs based on their severity.

Java has 7 logger levels: SEVERE, WARNING, INFO, CONFIG, FINE, FINER, and FINEST. The default is INFO.

You have to change both the level of the logger and the level of the handlers on the root logger:

        logger.setLevel(Level.FINE);
        Arrays.stream(logger.getHandlers()).forEach(handler -> {
            handler.setLevel(Level.FINE);
        });
View full example on GitHub

Python has 6 logger levels: CRITICAL, ERROR, WARNING, INFO, DEBUG, and NOTSET. The default is WARNING

To change the level of the logger:

    logger.setLevel(logging.DEBUG)
View full example on GitHub

Things get complicated when you use PyTest, though. By default, PyTest hides logging unless the test fails. You need to set 3 things to get PyTest to display logs on passing tests.

To always output logs with PyTest you need to run with additional arguments. First, -s to prevent PyTest from capturing the console. Second, -p no:logging, which allows you to override the default PyTest logging settings so logs can be displayed regardless of errors.

So you need to set these flags in your IDE, or run PyTest on command line like:

pytest -s -p no:logging

Finally, since you turned off logging in the arguments above, you now need to add configuration to turn it back on:

logging.basicConfig(level=logging.WARN)

.NET has 6 logger levels: Error, Warn, Info, Debug, Trace and None. The default level is Info.

To change the level of the logger:

            Log.SetLevel(LogEventLevel.Trace);
View full example on GitHub

Ruby logger has 5 logger levels: :debug, :info, :warn, :error, :fatal. The default is :info.

To change the level of the logger:

Selenium v4.10

    logger.level = :debug
View full example on GitHub

JavaScript has 9 logger levels: OFF, SEVERE, WARNING, INFO, DEBUG, FINE, FINER, FINEST, ALL. The default is OFF.

To change the level of the logger:

logger.setLevel(logging.Level.INFO)

Actionable items

Things are logged as warnings if they are something the user needs to take action on. This is often used for deprecations. For various reasons, Selenium project does not follow standard Semantic Versioning practices. Our policy is to mark things as deprecated for 3 releases and then remove them, so deprecations may be logged as warnings.

Java logs actionable content at logger level WARN

Example:

May 08, 2023 9:23:38 PM dev.selenium.troubleshooting.LoggingTest logging
WARNING: this is a warning

Python logs actionable content at logger level — WARNING Details about deprecations are logged at this level.

Example:

WARNING  selenium:test_logging.py:23 this is a warning

.NET logs actionable content at logger level Warn.

Example:

11:04:40.986 WARN LoggingTest: this is a warning

Ruby logs actionable content at logger level — :warn. Details about deprecations are logged at this level.

For example:

2023-05-08 20:53:13 WARN Selenium [:example_id] this is a warning

Because these items can get annoying, we’ve provided an easy way to turn them off, see filtering section below.

Useful information

This is the default level where Selenium logs things that users should be aware of but do not need to take actions on. This might reference a new method or direct users to more information about something

Java logs useful information at logger level INFO

Example:

May 08, 2023 9:23:38 PM dev.selenium.troubleshooting.LoggingTest logging
INFO: this is useful information

Python logs useful information at logger level — INFO

Example:

INFO     selenium:test_logging.py:22 this is useful information

.NET logs useful information at logger level Info.

Example:

11:04:40.986 INFO LoggingTest: this is useful information

Ruby logs useful information at logger level — :info.

Example:

2023-05-08 20:53:13 INFO Selenium [:example_id] this is useful information

Logs useful information at level: INFO

Debugging Details

The debug log level is used for information that may be needed for diagnosing issues and troubleshooting problems.

Java logs most debug content at logger level FINE

Example:

May 08, 2023 9:23:38 PM dev.selenium.troubleshooting.LoggingTest logging
FINE: this is detailed debug information

Python logs debugging details at logger level — DEBUG

Example:

DEBUG    selenium:test_logging.py:24 this is detailed debug information

.NET logs most debug content at logger level Debug.

Example:

11:04:40.986 DEBUG LoggingTest: this is detailed debug information

Ruby only provides one level for debugging, so all details are at logger level — :debug.

Example:

2023-05-08 20:53:13 DEBUG Selenium [:example_id] this is detailed debug information

Logs debugging details at level: FINER and FINEST

Logger output

Logs can be displayed in the console or stored in a file. Different languages have different defaults.

By default all logs are sent to System.err. To direct output to a file, you need to add a handler:

        Handler handler = new FileHandler("selenium.xml");
        logger.addHandler(handler);
View full example on GitHub

By default all logs are sent to sys.stderr. To direct output somewhere else, you need to add a handler with either a StreamHandler or a FileHandler:

    handler = logging.FileHandler(log_path)
    logger.addHandler(handler)
View full example on GitHub

By default all logs are sent to System.Console.Error output. To direct output somewhere else, you need to add a handler with a FileLogHandler:

            Log.Handlers.Add(new FileLogHandler(filePath));
View full example on GitHub

By default, logs are sent to the console in stdout.
To store the logs in a file:

Selenium v4.10

    logger.output = file_name
View full example on GitHub

JavaScript does not currently support sending output to a file.

To send logs to console output:

logging.installConsoleHandler()

Logger filtering

Java logging is managed on a per class level, so instead of using the root logger (Logger.getLogger("")), set the level you want to use on a per-class basis:

        Logger.getLogger(RemoteWebDriver.class.getName()).setLevel(Level.FINEST);
        Logger.getLogger(SeleniumManager.class.getName()).setLevel(Level.SEVERE);
View full example on GitHub
Because logging is managed by module, instead of working with just "selenium", you can specify different levels for different modules:
    logging.getLogger('selenium.webdriver.remote').setLevel(logging.WARN)
    logging.getLogger('selenium.webdriver.common').setLevel(logging.DEBUG)
View full example on GitHub

.NET logging is managed on a per class level, set the level you want to use on a per-class basis:

            Log.SetLevel(typeof(RemoteWebDriver), LogEventLevel.Debug);
            Log.SetLevel(typeof(SeleniumManager), LogEventLevel.Info);
View full example on GitHub

Ruby’s logger allows you to opt in (“allow”) or opt out (“ignore”) of log messages based on their IDs. Everything that Selenium logs includes an ID. You can also turn on or off all deprecation notices by using :deprecations.

These methods accept one or more symbols or an array of symbols:

Selenium v4.10

    logger.ignore(:jwp_caps, :logger_info)
View full example on GitHub

or

Selenium v4.10

    logger.allow(%i[selenium_manager example_id])
View full example on GitHub

3 - Upgrade to Selenium 4

Are you still using Selenium 3? This guide will help you upgrade to the latest release!

Upgrading to Selenium 4 should be a painless process if you are using one of the officially supported languages (Ruby, JavaScript, C#, Python, and Java). There might be some cases where a few issues can happen, and this guide will help you to sort them out. We will go through the steps to upgrade your project dependencies and understand the major deprecations and changes the version upgrade brings.

These are the steps we will follow to upgrade to Selenium 4:

  • Preparing our test code
  • Upgrading dependencies
  • Potential errors and deprecation messages

Note: while Selenium 3.x versions were being developed, support for the W3C WebDriver standard was implemented. Both this new protocol and the legacy JSON Wire Protocol were supported. Around version 3.11, Selenium code became compliant with the level W3C 1 specification. The W3C compliant code in the latest version of Selenium 3 will work as expected in Selenium 4.

Preparing our test code

Selenium 4 removes support for the legacy protocol and uses the W3C WebDriver standard by default under the hood. For most things, this implementation will not affect end users. The major exceptions are Capabilities and the Actions class.

Capabilities

If the test capabilities are not structured to be W3C compliant, may cause a session to not be started. Here is the list of W3C WebDriver standard capabilities:

  • browserName
  • browserVersion (replaces version)
  • platformName (replaces platform)
  • acceptInsecureCerts
  • pageLoadStrategy
  • proxy
  • timeouts
  • unhandledPromptBehavior

An up-to-date list of standard capabilities can be found at W3C WebDriver.

Any capability that is not contained in the list above, needs to include a vendor prefix. This applies to browser specific capabilities as well as cloud vendor specific capabilities. For example, if your cloud vendor uses build and name capabilities for your tests, you need to wrap them in a cloud:options block (check with your cloud vendor for the appropriate prefix).

Before

Move Code

DesiredCapabilities caps = DesiredCapabilities.firefox();
caps.setCapability("platform", "Windows 10");
caps.setCapability("version", "92");
caps.setCapability("build", myTestBuild);
caps.setCapability("name", myTestName);
WebDriver driver = new RemoteWebDriver(new URL(cloudUrl), caps);

caps = {};
caps['browserName'] = 'Firefox';
caps['platform'] = 'Windows 10';
caps['version'] = '92';
caps['build'] = myTestBuild;
caps['name'] = myTestName;

DesiredCapabilities caps = new DesiredCapabilities();
caps.SetCapability("browserName", "firefox");
caps.SetCapability("platform", "Windows 10");
caps.SetCapability("version", "92");
caps.SetCapability("build", myTestBuild);
caps.SetCapability("name", myTestName);
var driver = new RemoteWebDriver(new Uri(CloudURL), caps);

      caps = Selenium::WebDriver::Remote::Capabilities.firefox
      caps[:platform] = 'Windows 10'
      caps[:version] = '92'
      caps[:build] = my_test_build
      caps[:name] = my_test_name
      driver = Selenium::WebDriver.for :remote, url: cloud_url, desired_capabilities: caps
      driver.get(url)
      driver.quit
View full example on GitHub
caps = {}
caps['browserName'] = 'firefox'
caps['platform'] = 'Windows 10'
caps['version'] = '92'
caps['build'] = my_test_build
caps['name'] = my_test_name
driver = webdriver.Remote(cloud_url, desired_capabilities=caps)

After

Move Code

FirefoxOptions browserOptions = new FirefoxOptions();
browserOptions.setPlatformName("Windows 10");
browserOptions.setBrowserVersion("92");
Map<String, Object> cloudOptions = new HashMap<>();
cloudOptions.put("build", myTestBuild);
cloudOptions.put("name", myTestName);
browserOptions.setCapability("cloud:options", cloudOptions);
WebDriver driver = new RemoteWebDriver(new URL(cloudUrl), browserOptions);

capabilities = {
  browserName: 'firefox',
  browserVersion: '92',
  platformName: 'Windows 10',
  'cloud:options': {
     build: myTestBuild,
     name: myTestName,
  }
}

var browserOptions = new FirefoxOptions();
browserOptions.PlatformName = "Windows 10";
browserOptions.BrowserVersion = "92";
var cloudOptions = new Dictionary<string, object>();
cloudOptions.Add("build", myTestBuild);
cloudOptions.Add("name", myTestName);
browserOptions.AddAdditionalOption("cloud:options", cloudOptions);
var driver = new RemoteWebDriver(new Uri(CloudURL), browserOptions);

      options = Selenium::WebDriver::Options.firefox
      options.platform_name = 'Windows 10'
      options.browser_version = 'latest'
      cloud_options = {}
      cloud_options[:build] = my_test_build
      cloud_options[:name] = my_test_name
      options.add_option('cloud:options', cloud_options)
      driver = Selenium::WebDriver.for :remote, capabilities: options
      driver.get(url)
      driver.quit
View full example on GitHub
from selenium.webdriver.firefox.options import Options as FirefoxOptions
options = FirefoxOptions()
options.browser_version = '92'
options.platform_name = 'Windows 10'
cloud_options = {}
cloud_options['build'] = my_test_build
cloud_options['name'] = my_test_name
options.set_capability('cloud:options', cloud_options)
driver = webdriver.Remote(cloud_url, options=options)

Find element(s) utility methods in Java

The utility methods to find elements in the Java bindings (FindsBy interfaces) have been removed as they were meant for internal use only. The following code samples explain this better.

Finding a single element with findElement*

Before

driver.findElementByClassName("className");
driver.findElementByCssSelector(".className");
driver.findElementById("elementId");
driver.findElementByLinkText("linkText");
driver.findElementByName("elementName");
driver.findElementByPartialLinkText("partialText");
driver.findElementByTagName("elementTagName");
driver.findElementByXPath("xPath");
After

driver.findElement(By.className("className"));
driver.findElement(By.cssSelector(".className"));
driver.findElement(By.id("elementId"));
driver.findElement(By.linkText("linkText"));
driver.findElement(By.name("elementName"));
driver.findElement(By.partialLinkText("partialText"));
driver.findElement(By.tagName("elementTagName"));
driver.findElement(By.xpath("xPath"));

Finding a multiple elements with findElements*

Before

driver.findElementsByClassName("className");
driver.findElementsByCssSelector(".className");
driver.findElementsById("elementId");
driver.findElementsByLinkText("linkText");
driver.findElementsByName("elementName");
driver.findElementsByPartialLinkText("partialText");
driver.findElementsByTagName("elementTagName");
driver.findElementsByXPath("xPath");
After

driver.findElements(By.className("className"));
driver.findElements(By.cssSelector(".className"));
driver.findElements(By.id("elementId"));
driver.findElements(By.linkText("linkText"));
driver.findElements(By.name("elementName"));
driver.findElements(By.partialLinkText("partialText"));
driver.findElements(By.tagName("elementTagName"));
driver.findElements(By.xpath("xPath"));

Upgrading dependencies

Check the subsections below to install Selenium 4 and have your project dependencies upgraded.

Java

The process of upgrading Selenium depends on which build tool is being used. We will cover the most common ones for Java, which are Maven and Gradle. The minimum Java version required is still 8.

Maven

Before

<dependencies>
  <!-- more dependencies ... -->
  <dependency>
    <groupId>org.seleniumhq.selenium</groupId>
    <artifactId>selenium-java</artifactId>
    <version>3.141.59</version>
  </dependency>
  <!-- more dependencies ... -->
</dependencies>
After

<dependencies>
    <!-- more dependencies ... -->
    <dependency>
        <groupId>org.seleniumhq.selenium</groupId>
        <artifactId>selenium-java</artifactId>
        <version>4.4.0</version>
    </dependency>
    <!-- more dependencies ... -->
</dependencies>

After making the change, you could execute mvn clean compile on the same directory where the pom.xml file is.

Gradle

Before

plugins {
    id 'java'
}
group 'org.example'
version '1.0-SNAPSHOT'
repositories {
    mavenCentral()
}
dependencies {
    testImplementation 'org.junit.jupiter:junit-jupiter-api:5.7.0'
    testRuntimeOnly 'org.junit.jupiter:junit-jupiter-engine:5.7.0'
    implementation group: 'org.seleniumhq.selenium', name: 'selenium-java', version: '3.141.59'
}
test {
    useJUnitPlatform()
}
After

plugins {
    id 'java'
}
group 'org.example'
version '1.0-SNAPSHOT'
repositories {
    mavenCentral()
}
dependencies {
    testImplementation 'org.junit.jupiter:junit-jupiter-api:5.7.0'
    testRuntimeOnly 'org.junit.jupiter:junit-jupiter-engine:5.7.0'
    implementation group: 'org.seleniumhq.selenium', name: 'selenium-java', version: '4.4.0'
}
test {
    useJUnitPlatform()
}

After making the change, you could execute ./gradlew clean build on the same directory where the build.gradle file is.

To check all the Java releases, you can head to MVNRepository.

C#

The place to get updates for Selenium 4 in C# is NuGet. Under the Selenium.WebDriver package you can get the instructions to update to the latest version. Inside of Visual Studio, through the NuGet Package Manager you can execute:

PM> Install-Package Selenium.WebDriver -Version 4.4.0

Python

The most important change to use Python is the minimum required version. Selenium 4 will require a minimum Python 3.7 or higher. More details can be found at the Python Package Index. To upgrade from the command line, you can execute:

pip install selenium==4.4.3

Ruby

The update details for Selenium 4 can be seen at the selenium-webdriver gem in RubyGems. To install the latest version, you can execute:

gem install selenium-webdriver

To add it to your Gemfile:

gem 'selenium-webdriver', '~> 4.4.0'

JavaScript

The selenium-webdriver package can be found at the Node package manager, npmjs. Selenium 4 can be found here. To install it, you could either execute:

npm install selenium-webdriver

Or, update your package.json and run npm install:

{
  "name": "selenium-tests",
  "version": "1.0.0",
  "dependencies": {
    "selenium-webdriver": "^4.4.0"
  }
}

Potential errors and deprecation messages

Here is a set of code examples that will help to overcome the deprecation messages you might encounter after upgrading to Selenium 4.

Java

Waits and Timeout

The parameters received in Timeout have switched from expecting (long time, TimeUnit unit) to expect (Duration duration).

Before

driver.manage().timeouts().implicitlyWait(10, TimeUnit.SECONDS);
driver.manage().timeouts().setScriptTimeout(2, TimeUnit.MINUTES);
driver.manage().timeouts().pageLoadTimeout(10, TimeUnit.SECONDS);
After

driver.manage().timeouts().implicitlyWait(Duration.ofSeconds(10));
driver.manage().timeouts().scriptTimeout(Duration.ofMinutes(2));
driver.manage().timeouts().pageLoadTimeout(Duration.ofSeconds(10));

Waits are also expecting different parameters now. WebDriverWait is now expecting a Duration instead of a long for timeout in seconds and milliseconds. The withTimeout and pollingEvery utility methods from FluentWait have switched from expecting (long time, TimeUnit unit) to expect (Duration duration).

Before

new WebDriverWait(driver, 3)
.until(ExpectedConditions.elementToBeClickable(By.cssSelector("#id")));

Wait<WebDriver> wait = new FluentWait<WebDriver>(driver)
  .withTimeout(30, TimeUnit.SECONDS)
  .pollingEvery(5, TimeUnit.SECONDS)
  .ignoring(NoSuchElementException.class);
After

new WebDriverWait(driver, Duration.ofSeconds(3))
  .until(ExpectedConditions.elementToBeClickable(By.cssSelector("#id")));

  Wait<WebDriver> wait = new FluentWait<WebDriver>(driver)
  .withTimeout(Duration.ofSeconds(30))
  .pollingEvery(Duration.ofSeconds(5))
  .ignoring(NoSuchElementException.class);

Merging capabilities is no longer changing the calling object

It was possible to merge a different set of capabilities into another set, and it was mutating the calling object. Now, the result of the merge operation needs to be assigned.

Before

MutableCapabilities capabilities = new MutableCapabilities();
capabilities.setCapability("platformVersion", "Windows 10");
FirefoxOptions options = new FirefoxOptions();
options.setHeadless(true);
options.merge(capabilities);

// As a result, the `options` object was getting modified.
After

MutableCapabilities capabilities = new MutableCapabilities();
capabilities.setCapability("platformVersion", "Windows 10");
FirefoxOptions options = new FirefoxOptions();
options.setHeadless(true);
options = options.merge(capabilities);

// The result of the `merge` call needs to be assigned to an object.

Firefox Legacy

Before GeckoDriver was around, the Selenium project had a driver implementation to automate Firefox (version <48). However, this implementation is not needed anymore as it does not work in recent versions of Firefox. To avoid major issues when upgrading to Selenium 4, the setLegacy option will be shown as deprecated. The recommendation is to stop using the old implementation and rely only on GeckoDriver. The following code will show the setLegacy line deprecated after upgrading.

FirefoxOptions options = new FirefoxOptions();
options.setLegacy(true);

BrowserType

The BrowserType interface has been around for a long time, however it is getting deprecated in favour of the new Browser interface.

Before

MutableCapabilities capabilities = new MutableCapabilities();
capabilities.setCapability("browserVersion", "92");
capabilities.setCapability("browserName", BrowserType.FIREFOX);
After

MutableCapabilities capabilities = new MutableCapabilities();
capabilities.setCapability("browserVersion", "92");
capabilities.setCapability("browserName", Browser.FIREFOX);

C#

AddAdditionalCapability is deprecated

Instead of it, AddAdditionalOption is recommended. Here is an example showing this:

Before

var browserOptions = new ChromeOptions();
browserOptions.PlatformName = "Windows 10";
browserOptions.BrowserVersion = "latest";
var cloudOptions = new Dictionary<string, object>();
browserOptions.AddAdditionalCapability("cloud:options", cloudOptions, true);
After

var browserOptions = new ChromeOptions();
browserOptions.PlatformName = "Windows 10";
browserOptions.BrowserVersion = "latest";
var cloudOptions = new Dictionary<string, object>();
browserOptions.AddAdditionalOption("cloud:options", cloudOptions);

Python

executable_path has been deprecated, please pass in a Service object

In Selenium 4, you’ll need to set the driver’s executable_path from a Service object to prevent deprecation warnings. (Or don’t set the path and instead make sure that the driver you need is on the System PATH.)

Before

from selenium import webdriver
options = webdriver.ChromeOptions()
driver = webdriver.Chrome(
    executable_path=CHROMEDRIVER_PATH, 
    options=options
)
After

from selenium import webdriver
from selenium.webdriver.chrome.service import Service as ChromeService
options = webdriver.ChromeOptions()
service = ChromeService(executable_path=CHROMEDRIVER_PATH)
driver = webdriver.Chrome(service=service, options=options)

Summary

We went through the major changes to be taken into consideration when upgrading to Selenium 4. Covering the different aspects to cover when test code is prepared for the upgrade, including suggestions on how to prevent potential issues that can show up when using the new version of Selenium. To finalize, we also covered a set of possible issues that you can bump into after upgrading, and we shared potential fixes for those issues.

This was originally posted at https://saucelabs.com/resources/articles/how-to-upgrade-to-selenium-4