Configuration

If you create a WebdriverIO instance, you need to define some options in order to set the proper capabilities and settings. When calling the remote method like:

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var webdriverio = require('webdriverio');
var client = webdriverio.remote(options);

you need to pass in an options object to define your Webdriver instance. Note that this is only necessary if you run WebdriverIO as a standalone package. If you are using the wdio test runner, these options belong in your wdio.conf.js configuration file. The following options can be defined:

desiredCapabilities

Defines the capabilities you want to run in your Selenium session. See the Selenium documentation for a list of the available capabilities. Also useful is Sauce Labs Automated Test Configurator that helps you to create this object by clicking together your desired capabilities.

Refer to the cloud service docs for further service specific options.

Type: Object
Default: { browserName: 'firefox' }

Example:

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browserName: 'chrome',    // options: `firefox`, `chrome`, `opera`, `safari`
version: '27.0',          // browser version
platform: 'XP',           // OS platform
tags: ['tag1','tag2'],    // specify some tags (e.g. if you use Sauce Labs)
name: 'my test'           // set name for test (e.g. if you use Sauce Labs)
pageLoadStrategy: 'eager' // strategy for page load

Details:

pageLoadStrategy is implemented in Selenium 2.46.0, and apparently, it is only working on Firefox. The valid values are:

normal - waits for document.readyState to be ‘complete’. This value is used by default.
eager - will abort the wait when document.readyState is ‘interactive’ instead of waiting for ‘complete’.
none - will abort the wait immediately, without waiting for any of the page to load.

logLevel

Level of logging verbosity.

verbose: everything gets logged
silent: nothing gets logged
command: url to Selenium server gets logged (e.g. [15:28:00] COMMAND GET "/wd/hub/session/dddef9eb-82a9-4f6c-ab5e-e5934aecc32a/title")
data: payload of the request gets logged (e.g. [15:28:00] DATA {})
result: result from the Selenium server gets logged (e.g. [15:28:00] RESULT "Google")

Type: String
Default: silent
Options: verbose | silent | command | data | result

logOutput

Pipe WebdriverIO logs into a file. You can either define a directory, and WebdriverIO generates a filename for the log file or you can pass in a writeable stream, and everything gets redirected to that (last one doesn’t work yet with the wdio runner).

Type: String|writeable stream
Default: null

protocol

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

Type: String
Default: http

host

Host of your WebDriver server.

Type: String
Default: 127.0.0.1

port

Port your WebDriver server is on.

Type: Number
Default: 4444

path

Path to WebDriver server.

Type: String
Default: /wd/hub

baseUrl

Shorten url command calls by setting a base url. If your url parameter starts with /, the base url gets prepended, not including the path portion of your baseUrl. If your url parameter starts without a scheme or / (like some/path), the base url gets prepended directly.

Type: String
Default: null

connectionRetryTimeout

Timeout for any request to the Selenium server

Type: Number
Default: 90000

connectionRetryCount

Count of request retries to the Selenium server

Type: Number
Default: 3

coloredLogs

Enables colors for log output

Type: Boolean
Default: true

deprecationWarnings

Warns when a deprecated command is used

Type: Boolean
Default: true

bail

If you only want to run your tests until a specific amount of tests have failed use bail (default is 0 - don’t bail, run all tests). Note: Please be aware that when using a third party test runner such as Mocha, additional configuration might be required.

Type: Number
Default: 0 (don’t bail, run all tests)

screenshotPath

Saves a screenshot to a given path if the Selenium driver crashes

Type: String|null
Default: null

screenshotOnReject

Attaches a screenshot of a current page to the error if the Selenium driver crashes. Can be specified as object to set the timeout and count of retries on the attempt to take screenshot.

Type: Boolean|Object
Default: false

Note: Attaching screenshot to the error uses extra time to get screenshot and extra memory to store it. So for the sake of performance it is disabled by default.

Example:

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// take screenshot on reject
screenshotOnReject: true

// take screenshot on reject and set some options
screenshotOnReject: {
    connectionRetryTimeout: 30000,
    connectionRetryCount: 0
}

waitforTimeout

Default timeout for all waitForXXX commands. Note the lowercase f.

Type: Number
Default: 1000

waitforInterval

Default interval for all waitForXXX commands.

Type: Number
Default: 500

queryParams

A key-value store of query parameters to be added to every selenium request. Type: Object
Default: None

Example:

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queryParams: {
  specialKey: 'd2ViZHJpdmVyaW8='
}

// Selenium request would look like:
// http://127.0.0.1:4444/v1/session/a4ef025c69524902b77af5339017fd44/window/current/size?specialKey=d2ViZHJpdmVyaW8%3D

headers

A key-value store of headers to be added to every selenium request. Values must be strings. Type: Object
Default: None

Example

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headers: {
  Authorization: 'Basic dGVzdEtleTp0ZXN0VmFsdWU='
}
// This adds headers based on the key
// This would result in a header named 'Authorization' with a value of 'Basic dGVzdEtleTp0ZXN0VmFsdWU='

debug

Enables node debugging

Type: Boolean
Default: false

execArgv

Node arguments to specify when launching child processes

Type: Array of String
Default: null

Setup Babel to write tests using next generation JavaScript

Note: these instructions are for Babel 6. Using Babel 5 is not recommended.

First, install babel dependencies:

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npm install --save-dev babel-register babel-preset-es2015

There are multiple ways to setup Babel using the wdio testrunner. If you are running Cucumber or Jasmine tests, you just need to register Babel in the before hook of your config file

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before: function() {
    require('babel-register');
},

If you run Mocha tests, you can use Mocha’s internal compiler to register Babel, e.g.:

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mochaOpts: {
    ui: 'bdd',
    compilers: ['js:babel-register'],
    require: ['./test/helpers/common.js']
},

.babelrc settings

Using babel-polyfill is not recommended with webdriverio; if you need such features, use babel-runtime instead by running

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npm install --save-dev babel-plugin-transform-runtime babel-runtime

and including the following in your .babelrc:

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{
  "presets": ["es2015"],
  "plugins": [
    ["transform-runtime", {
      "polyfill": false
    }]
  ]
}

Instead of babel-preset-es2015, you may use babel-preset-es2015-nodeX, where X is your Node major version, to avoid unnecessary polyfills like generators:

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npm install --save-dev babel-preset-es2015-node6

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{
  "presets": ["es2015-node6"],
  "plugins": [
    ["transform-runtime", {
      "polyfill": false,
      "regenerator": false
    }]
  ]
}

Setup TypeScript

Similar to Babel setup, you can register TypeScript to compile your .ts files in your before hook of your config file. You will need ts-node as an installed devDependency.

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before(function() {
    require('ts-node/register');
}),

Similarly for mocha:

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mochaOpts: {
    ui: 'bdd',
    compilers: ['ts:ts-node/register'],
    requires: ['./test/helpers/common.js']
},