WebDriverManager

WebDriverManager allows to automate the management of the binary drivers (e.g. chromedriver, geckodriver, etc.) required by Selenium WebDriver.

Motivation
WebDriverManager as Java dependency
WebDriverManager CLI
WebDriverManager server
Known issues
Help
Backers
Sponsors
About

Motivation

If you use Selenium WebDriver, you will know that in order to use some browsers such as Chrome, Firefox, Opera, PhantomJS, Microsoft Edge, or Internet Explorer, first you need to download a binary file which allows WebDriver to handle browsers. In Java, the path to this binary must be set as JVM properties, as follows:

System.setProperty("webdriver.chrome.driver", "/path/to/binary/chromedriver");
System.setProperty("webdriver.gecko.driver", "/path/to/binary/geckodriver");
System.setProperty("webdriver.opera.driver", "/path/to/binary/operadriver");
System.setProperty("phantomjs.binary.path", "/path/to/binary/phantomjs");
System.setProperty("webdriver.edge.driver", "C:/path/to/binary/MicrosoftWebDriver.exe");
System.setProperty("webdriver.ie.driver", "C:/path/to/binary/IEDriverServer.exe");

This is quite annoying since it forces you to link directly this binary file into your source code. In addition, you have to check manually when new versions of the binaries are released. WebDriverManager comes to the rescue, performing in an automated way all this dirty job for you. WebDriverManager can be used in 3 different ways:

WebDriverManager as Java dependency (typically from test cases).
WebDriverManager as a Command Line Interface (CLI) tool (from the the shell).
WebDriverManager as a Server (using a REST-like API).

WebDriverManager is open source, released under the terms of Apache 2.0 License.

WebDriverManager as Java dependency

Basic usage

In order to use WebDriverManager from tests in a Maven project, you need to add the following dependency in your pom.xml (Java 8 or upper required):

<dependency>
    <groupId>io.github.bonigarcia</groupId>
    <artifactId>webdrivermanager</artifactId>
    <version>3.4.0</version>
    <scope>test</scope>
</dependency>

... or in Gradle project:

dependencies {
    testCompile("io.github.bonigarcia:webdrivermanager:3.4.0")
}

Once we have included this dependency, you can let WebDriverManager to manage the WebDriver binaries for you. Take a look at this JUnit 4 example which uses Chrome with Selenium WebDriver (in order to use WebDriverManager in conjunction with JUnit 5, the extension Selenium-Jupiter is highly recommended):

public class ChromeTest {

    private WebDriver driver;

    @BeforeClass
    public static void setupClass() {
        WebDriverManager.chromedriver().setup();
    }

    @Before
    public void setupTest() {
        driver = new ChromeDriver();
    }

    @After
    public void teardown() {
        if (driver != null) {
            driver.quit();
        }
    }

    @Test
    public void test() {
        // Your test code here
    }

}

Notice that simply adding WebDriverManager.chromedriver().setup(); WebDriverManager does magic for you:

It checks the version of the browser installed in your machine (e.g. Chrome, Firefox).
It checks the version of the driver (e.g. chromedriver, geckodriver). If unknown, it uses the latest version of the driver.
It downloads the WebDriver binary if it is not present on the WebDriverManager cache (~/.m2/repository/webdriver by default).
It exports the proper WebDriver Java environment variables required by Selenium (not done when using WebDriverManager from the CLI or as a Server).

WebDriverManager resolves the driver binaries for the browsers Chrome, Firefox, Opera, PhantomJS, Microsoft Edge, and Internet Explorer. For that, it provides several drivers managers for these browsers. These drivers managers can be used as follows:

WebDriverManager.chromedriver().setup();
WebDriverManager.firefoxdriver().setup();
WebDriverManager.operadriver().setup();
WebDriverManager.phantomjs().setup();
WebDriverManager.edgedriver().setup();
WebDriverManager.iedriver().setup();

NOTE: The old WebDriverManager API (version 1.x) has been deprecated as of version 3.x (ChromeDriverManager.getInstance().setup();, FirefoxDriverManager.getInstance().setup();, and so on).

Moreover, WebDriverManager provides a generic driver manager. This manager which can be parameterized using Selenium driver classes (e.g. org.openqa.selenium.chrome.ChromeDriver, org.openqa.selenium.firefox.FirefoxDriver, etc), as follows:

import org.openqa.selenium.WebDriver;
import org.openqa.selenium.chrome.ChromeDriver;
import io.github.bonigarcia.wdm.WebDriverManager;

// ...

Class<? extends WebDriver> driverClass = ChromeDriver.class;
WebDriverManager.getInstance(driverClass).setup();
WebDriver driver = driverClass.newInstance();

This generic driver manager can be also parameterized using the enumeration DriverManagerType. For instance as follows:

import static io.github.bonigarcia.wdm.DriverManagerType.CHROME;

import org.openqa.selenium.WebDriver;
import org.openqa.selenium.chrome.ChromeDriver;
import io.github.bonigarcia.wdm.WebDriverManager;

// ...

WebDriverManager.getInstance(CHROME).setup();
WebDriver driver = new ChromeDriver();

Examples

Check out the repository WebDriverManager Examples which contains different JUnit 4 test examples using WebDriverManager.

Driver versions

The relationship between browser version and driver version is managed in a internal database by WebDriverManager stored as Java properties in the file versions.properties. The local version of this file (distributed within WebDriverManager) is used to find out the proper driver version. The online version of versions.properties (master branch) is used when the relationship between browser and driver is not present in local.

In order to resolve the driver version for a given browser, first WebDriverManager try to find out the version of that browser. This mechanism depends on the browser (Chrome, Firefox, etc) and the platform (Linux, Windows, Mac). For instance, for Chrome in Linux, the command google-chrome --version is executed in the shell.

Moreover in order to improve the performance of WebDriverManager, as of version 3.1.0, resolved driver versions for browsers are stored persistently as Java preferences. The validity of this relationship (browser version and driver version) stored as preferences is linked to a time-to-live (ttl). By default, this value is 3600 seconds.

WebDriverManager API

WebDriverManager exposes its API by means of the builder pattern. This means that given a WebDriverManger instance, their capabilities can be tuned using different methods. The following table summarizes the WebDriverManager API, together with the equivalent configuration key:

Method	Description	Equivalent configuration key
`version(String)`	By default, WebDriverManager tries to download the proper version of a given driver binary. A concrete version can be specified using this method.	`wdm.chromeDriverVersion`, `wdm.operaDriverVersion`, `wdm.internetExplorerDriverVersion`, `wdm.edgeDriverVersion`, `wdm.phantomjsDriverVersion`, `wdm.geckoDriverVersion`
`targetPath(String)`	Folder in which WebDriver binaries are stored (WedDriverManager cache).	`wdm.targetPath`
`forceCache()`	By default, WebDriverManager connects to the specific driver repository URL to find out what is the latest version of the binary. This can be avoided forcing to use the latest version form the local repository.	`wdm.forceCache=true`
`forceDownload()`	By default, WebDriverManager finds out the latest version of the binary, and then it uses the cached version if exists. This option forces to download again the binary even if it has been previously cached.	`wdm.override=true`
`useBetaVersions()`	By default, WebDriverManager skip beta versions. With this method, WebDriverManager will download also beta versions.	`wdm.useBetaVersions=true`
`architecture(Architecture)`	By default, WebDriverManager would try to use the proper binary for the platform running the test case (i.e. 32-bit or 64-bit). This behavior can be changed by forcing a given architecture: 32-bits (`Architecture.x32`) or 64-bits (`Architecture.x64`);	`wdm.architecture`
`arch32()`	Force to use the 32-bit version of a given driver binary.	`wdm.architecture=32`
`arch64()`	Force to use the 64-bit version of a given driver binary.	`wdm.architecture=64`
`operatingSystem(OperatingSystem)`	By default, WebDriverManager downloads the binary for the same operating systems than the machine running the test. This can be changed using this method (accepted values: `WIN`, `LINUX`, `MAC`).	`wdm.os=WIN`, `wdm.os=LINUX`, `wdm.os=MAC`
`driverRepositoryUrl(URL)`	This method allows to change the repository URL in which the binaries are hosted (see next section for default values).	`wdm.chromeDriverUrl`, `wdm.operaDriverUrl`, `wdm.internetExplorerDriverUrl`, `wdm.edgeDriverUrl`, `wdm.phantomjsDriverUrl`, `wdm.geckoDriverUrl`
`useMirror()`	The npm.taobao.org site is a mirror which hosts different software assets. Among them, it hosts chromedriver, geckodriver, operadriver, and phantomjs driver. Therefore, this method can be used for Chrome, Firefox, Opera, and PhantomJS to force to use the taobao.org mirror.	`wdm.useMirror=true`
`proxy(String)`	Use a HTTP proxy for the Internet connection using the following notation: `my.http.proxy:1234` or `username:password@my.http.proxy:1234`. This can be also configured using the environment variable environment variable `HTTPS_PROXY`.	`wdm.proxy`
`proxyUser(String)`	Specify a username for HTTP proxy. This can be also configured using the environment variable environment variable `HTTPS_PROXY_USER`.	`wdm.proxyUser`
`proxyPass(String)`	Specify a password for HTTP proxy. This can be also configured using the environment variable environment variable `HTTPS_PROXY_PASS`.	`wdm.proxyPass`
`ignoreVersions(String...)`	Ignore some versions to be downloaded.	`wdm.ignoreVersions`
`gitHubTokenName(String)`	Token name for authenticated requests (see Known issues).	`wdm.gitHubTokenName`
`gitHubTokenSecret(String)`	Secret for authenticated requests (see Known issues).	`wdm.gitHubTokenSecret`
`timeout(int)`	Timeout (in seconds) to connect and download binaries from online repositories	`wdm.timeout`
`properties(String)`	Properties file for configuration values (by default `webdrivermanager.properties`).	`wdm.properties`
`avoidExport()`	Avoid exporting JVM properties with the path of binaries (i.e. `webdriver.chrome.driver`, `webdriver.gecko.driver`, etc). Only recommended for interactive mode.	`wdm.avoidExport`
`avoidOutputTree()`	Avoid create tree structure for downloaded binaries (e.g. `webdriver/chromedriver/linux64/2.37/` for `chromedriver`). Used by default in interactive mode.	`wdm.avoidOutputTree`
`avoidAutoVersion()`	Avoid checking the version of the installed browser (e.g. Chrome, Firefox) to find out the proper version of the required driver (e.g. chromedriver, geckodriver). Only recommended for WebDriverManager as Java dependency mode.	`wdm.avoidAutoVersion`
`browserPath()`	As of WebDriverManager 3.0.0, versions of drivers are contained in an internal database (versions.properties) wich matches the driver version to each browser version. In order to find the browser version, a command is executed on the shell (e.g. `google-chrome --version` in Linux). The path of the browser can be configured using this method	`wdm.binaryPath`
`ttl()`	As of WebDriverManager 3.1.0, resolved versions of drivers are stored as Java preferences. These values has a expiration time based on this Time To Live (TTL) value, measured in seconds. By default this value is 3600 (i.e. 1 hour).	`wdm.ttl`
`setVersionsPropertiesUrl(URL)`	URL of the online `version.properties` file, used if the relationship between browser and driver is unknown in the local version of that file. By default this value targets to the master branch of GitHub.	`wdm.versionsPropertiesUrl`

The following table contains some examples:

Example	Description
`WebDriverManager.chromedriver().version("2.26").setup();`	Force to use version 2.26 of chromedriver
`WebDriverManager.firefoxdriver().arch32().setup();`	Force to use the 32-bit version of geckodriver
`WebDriverManager.operadriver().forceCache().setup();`	Force to use the cache version of operadriver
`WebDriverManager.phantomjs().useMirror().setup();`	Force to use the taobao.org mirror to download phantomjs driver
`WebDriverManager.chromedriver().proxy("server:port").setup();`	Using proxy server:port for the connection

Additional methods are exposed by WebDriverManager, namely:

getVersions(): This method allows to find out the list of of available binary versions for a given browser.
getBinaryPath(): This method allows to find out the path of the latest resolved binary.
getDownloadedVersion(): This method allows to find out the version of the latest resolved binary.
clearPreferences(): This methods allows to remove all Java preferences stored previously by WebDriverManager.
clearCache(): This methods allows to remove all binaries previously downloaded by WebDriverManager.

Configuration

Configuration parameters for WebDriverManager are set in the webdrivermanager.properties file:

wdm.targetPath=~/.m2/repository/webdriver
wdm.forceCache=false
wdm.override=false
wdm.useMirror=false
wdm.useBetaVersions=false
wdm.avoidExport=false
wdm.avoidOutputTree=false
wdm.avoidAutoVersion=false
wdm.avoidAutoReset=false
wdm.avoidPreferences=false
wdm.timeout=30
wdm.serverPort=4041
wdm.ttl=3600

wdm.chromeDriverUrl=https://chromedriver.storage.googleapis.com/
wdm.chromeDriverMirrorUrl=http://npm.taobao.org/mirrors/chromedriver
wdm.chromeDriverExport=webdriver.chrome.driver

wdm.geckoDriverUrl=https://api.github.com/repos/mozilla/geckodriver/releases
wdm.geckoDriverMirrorUrl=http://npm.taobao.org/mirrors/geckodriver
wdm.geckoDriverExport=webdriver.gecko.driver

wdm.operaDriverUrl=https://api.github.com/repos/operasoftware/operachromiumdriver/releases
wdm.operaDriverMirrorUrl=http://npm.taobao.org/mirrors/operadriver
wdm.operaDriverExport=webdriver.opera.driver

wdm.phantomjsDriverUrl=https://bitbucket.org/ariya/phantomjs/downloads/
wdm.phantomjsDriverMirrorUrl=http://npm.taobao.org/mirrors/phantomjs
wdm.phantomjsDriverExport=phantomjs.binary.path

wdm.edgeDriverUrl=https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-edge/tools/webdriver/
wdm.edgeDriverExport=webdriver.edge.driver

wdm.internetExplorerDriverUrl=https://selenium-release.storage.googleapis.com/
wdm.internetExplorerDriverExport=webdriver.ie.driver

wdm.seleniumServerStandaloneUrl=https://selenium-release.storage.googleapis.com/

wdm.versionsPropertiesUrl=https://raw.githubusercontent.com/bonigarcia/webdrivermanager/master/src/main/resources/versions.properties

For instance, the variable wdm.targetPath is the default folder in which WebDriver binaries are going to be stored. By default the path of the Maven local repository is used. This property can be overwritten by Java system properties, for example:

System.setProperty("wdm.targetPath", "/my/custom/path/to/driver/binaries");

... or by command line, for example:

-Dwdm.override=true

By default, WebDriverManager downloads the latest version of the WebDriver binary. But concrete versions of WebDriver binaries can be forced by changing the value of the variables wdm.chromeDriverVersion, wdm.operaDriverVersion, wdm.internetExplorerDriverVersion, or wdm.edgeDriverVersion to a concrete version. For instance:

-Dwdm.chromeDriverVersion=2.25
-Dwdm.internetExplorerDriverVersion=2.46
-Dwdm.operaDriverVersion=0.2.0
-Dwdm.edgeDriverVersion=3.14366
-Dwdm.phantomjsDriverVersion=2.1.1
-Dwdm.geckoDriverVersion=0.11.1

If no version is specified, WebDriverManager sends a request to the server hosting the binary. In order to avoid this request and check if any binary has been previously downloaded, the key wdm.forceCache can be used.

The value of these properties can be overridden by means of environmental variables. The name of these variables result from putting the name in uppercase and replacing the symbol . by _. For example, the property wdm.targetPath can be overridden by the environment variable WDM_TARGETPATH.

Moreover, configuration values can be customized from Java code. The configuration object is unique per driver manager (i.e. WebDriverManager.chromedriver(), WebDriverManager.firefoxdriver(), etc.) and is accessed using the method config(). The configuration parameters can be reset to default values using the method reset(). For example:

WebDriverManager.chromedriver().config().setProperties("/path/to/my-wdm.properties");
WebDriverManager.firefoxdriver().config().setForceCache(true);
WebDriverManager.operadriver().config().setOverride(true);
WebDriverManager.chromedriver().config().reset();

Finally, if a single configuration object needs to be specified for all the driver managers, it can be done using the static method globalConfig(). This global configuration is reset as usual using the reset() method. For example:

WebDriverManager.globalConfig().setTargetPath("/path/to/my-wdm-cache");
WebDriverManager.globalConfig().reset();

WebDriverManager CLI

As of version 2.2.0, WebDriverManager can used interactively from the Command Line Interface (CLI), i.e. the shell, to resolve and download binaries for the supported browsers. There are two ways of using this feature:

Directly from the source code, using Maven. The command to be used is mvn exec:java -Dexec.args="browserName". For instance:

> mvn exec:java -Dexec.args="chrome"
[INFO] Scanning for projects...
[INFO]
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] Building WebDriverManager 3.4.0
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[INFO]
[INFO] --- exec-maven-plugin:1.6.0:java (default-cli) @ webdrivermanager ---
[INFO] Using WebDriverManager to resolve chrome
[INFO] Using chromedriver 73.0.3683.68 (since Google Chrome 73 is installed in your machine)
[INFO] Reading https://chromedriver.storage.googleapis.com/ to seek chromedriver
[INFO] Downloading https://chromedriver.storage.googleapis.com/73.0.3683.68/chromedriver_win32.zip
[INFO] Extracting binary from compressed file chromedriver_win32.zip
[INFO] Resulting binary D:\projects\webdrivermanager\chromedriver.exe
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] BUILD SUCCESS
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] Total time: 14.919 s
[INFO] Finished at: 2019-04-11T00:36:32+02:00
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------

Using WebDriverManager as a fat-jar (i.e. WebDriverManager with all its dependencies in a single executable JAR file). This JAR file can downloaded from here and also it can be created using the command mvn compile assembly:single from the source code. Once you get the fat-jar, you simply need to use the command java -jar webdrivermanager-3.4.0-fat.jar browserName, for instance:

> java -jar webdrivermanager-3.4.0-fat.jar chrome
[INFO] Using WebDriverManager to resolve chrome
[INFO] Using chromedriver 73.0.3683.68 (since Google Chrome 73 is installed in your machine)
[INFO] Reading https://chromedriver.storage.googleapis.com/ to seek chromedriver
[INFO] Downloading https://chromedriver.storage.googleapis.com/73.0.3683.68/chromedriver_win32.zip
[INFO] Extracting binary from compressed file chromedriver_win32.zip
[INFO] Resulting binary D:\projects\webdrivermanager\chromedriver.exe

WebDriverManager server

As of version 3.0.0, WebDriverManager can used as a server. To start this mode, the shell is used. Once again, two options are allowed:

Directly from the source code and Maven. The command to be used is mvn exec:java -Dexec.args="server <port>". If the second argument is not specified, the default port will be used (4041):

$ mvn exec:java -Dexec.args="server"
[INFO] Scanning for projects...
[INFO]
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] Building WebDriverManager 3.4.0
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[INFO]
[INFO] --- exec-maven-plugin:1.6.0:java (default-cli) @ webdrivermanager ---
[INFO] WebDriverManager server listening on port 4041

Using WebDriverManager as a fat-jar. For instance:

> java -jar webdrivermanager-3.4.0-fat.jar server
[INFO] WebDriverManager server listening on port 4041

When the WebDriverManager is up and running, a REST-like API using HTTP request can be done to resolve driver binaries (chromedriver, geckodriver, etc.). For instance, supposing that WebDriverManager is running the local host and in the default port:

http://localhost:4041/chromedriver : To download the latest version of chromedriver
http://localhost:4041/firefoxdriver : To download the latest version of geckodriver
http://localhost:4041/operadriver : To download the latest version of operadriver
http://localhost:4041/phantomjs : To download the latest version of phantomjs driver
http://localhost:4041/edgedriver : To download the latest version of MicrosoftWebDriver
http://localhost:4041/iedriver : To download the latest version of IEDriverServer

These requests use HTTP GET and can be done using a normal browser. The driver binary is automatically downloaded by the browser since it is sent as an attachment in the HTTP response.

In addition, configuration parameters can be specified in the URL using query arguments. The name of these arguments are identical to the parameters in the webdrivermanager.properties file but skipping the prefix wdm. (see configuration section). For instance:

Example	Description
http://localhost:4041/chromedriver?chromeDriverVersion=2.40	Downloads the version 2.40 of chromedriver
http://localhost:4041/firefoxdriver?geckoDriverVersion=0.21.0	Downloads the version 0.21.0 of geckodriver
http://localhost:4041/operadriver?os=WIN&forceCache=true	Force to use the cache version of operadriver for Windows

Finally, requests to WebDriverManager server can be done interactively using tools such as curl, as follows:

curl -O -J http://localhost:4041/chromedriver
curl -O -J "http://localhost:4041/chromedriver?chromeDriverVersion=2.40&forceCache=true"

Known issues

HTTP response code 403

Some of the binaries (for Opera and Firefox) are hosted on GitHub. When several consecutive requests are made by WebDriverManager, GitHub servers return an HTTP 403 error response as follows:

Caused by: java.io.IOException: Server returned HTTP response code: 403 for URL: https://api.github.com/repos/operasoftware/operachromiumdriver/releases
    at sun.net.www.protocol.http.HttpURLConnection.getInputStream0(HttpURLConnection.java:1840)
    at sun.net.www.protocol.http.HttpURLConnection.getInputStream(HttpURLConnection.java:1441)
    at sun.net.www.protocol.https.HttpsURLConnectionImpl.getInputStream(HttpsURLConnectionImpl.java:254)
    at io.github.bonigarcia.wdm.BrowserManager.openGitHubConnection(BrowserManager.java:463)
    at io.github.bonigarcia.wdm.OperaDriverManager.getDrivers(OperaDriverManager.java:55)
    at io.github.bonigarcia.wdm.BrowserManager.manage(BrowserManager.java:168)

Caused by: java.io.IOException: Server returned HTTP response code: 403 for URL: https://api.github.com/repos/mozilla/geckodriver/releases
    at sun.net.www.protocol.http.HttpURLConnection.getInputStream0(HttpURLConnection.java:1840)
    at sun.net.www.protocol.http.HttpURLConnection.getInputStream(HttpURLConnection.java:1441)
    at sun.net.www.protocol.https.HttpsURLConnectionImpl.getInputStream(HttpsURLConnectionImpl.java:254)
    at io.github.bonigarcia.wdm.FirefoxDriverManager.getDrivers(FirefoxDriverManager.java:61)
    at io.github.bonigarcia.wdm.BrowserManager.manage(BrowserManager.java:163)

In order to avoid this problem, authenticated requests should be done. The procedure is the following:

Create a token/secret pair in your GitHub account.
Tell WebDriverManager the value of this pair token/secret. To do that you should use the configuration keys wdm.gitHubTokenName and wdm.gitHubTokenSecret. You can pass them as command line Java parameters as follows:

-Dwdm.gitHubTokenName=<your-token-name>
-Dwdm.gitHubTokenSecret=<your-token-secret>

... or as environment variables (e.g. in Travis CI) as follows:

WDM_GITHUBTOKENNAME=<your-token-name>
WDM_GITHUBTOKENSECRET=<your-token-secret>

Tons of org.apache.http DEBUG log

WebDriverManager uses Apache HTTP Client to download WebDriver binaries from online repositories. Internally, Apache HTTP client writes a lot of logging information using the DEBUG level of org.apache.http classes. To reduce this amount of logs, the level of this logger might be reduced. For instance, in the case of Logback, the log configuration file should include the following:

<configuration>
    <logger name="org.apache.http" level="WARN" />
</configuration>

You can find further information about others logging implementations in the Apache HTTP Client logging practices page.

Help

If you have questions on how to use WebDriverManager properly with a special configuration or suchlike, please consider asking a question on Stack Overflow and tag it with webdrivermanager-java.

Backers

Thank you to all our backers! [Become a backer]

repon06 / webdrivermanager