This is sort-of a place-holder for a full-length post that I really ought to write about driving web testing from PowerShell using Selenium. I actually have a little module around for doing that with WaTiN, but honestly the Selenium project seems to be a lot more active, and has quite a bit of muscle behind it since they’ve merged with WebDriver…
Add-Type -path ~\Downloads\selenium-dotnet-2.16.0\net40\WebDriver.dll
# Navigate to google in IE (or Firefox, Chrome, Opera, etc)
$driver = New-Object OpenQA.Selenium.IE.InternetExplorerDriver
$driver.Url = "http://google.com"
# Type PowerShell into the query box, the page will update via AJAX
# Note we won't hit enter or anything
$q = $driver.FindElementByname("q")
$q.SendKeys("PowerShell")
# Use a CSS selector to find the first result link and click it
$driver.FindElementByCssSelector("li.g h3.r a").Click()
One Catch
If you try this with IE and you get the error Unexpected error launching Internet Explorer. Protected Mode must be set to the same value (enabled or disabled) for all zones ... it means exactly what it says. You need to open “Internet Options” from your start menu (or from IE), and go through each “zone” and set the “Enabled Protected Mode” check box to the same value for each zone (either all checked, obviously the most secure, or all unchecked). I’m not going to debate whether setting them all unprotected is a good idea … I set mine to all protected, but I don’t generally use IE anyway.
If you want more help, Selenium’s documentation is great, and there’s a section on Getting Started with Selenium WebDriver which I found quite helpful (make sure your examples are in “csharp” and you can almost just copy and paste — someone should offer to do them in PowerShell).
If you want more information about the Internet Explorer driver and this problem in particular, the short answer is that “Protected Mode” is a security boundry, so if you cross over it the COM automation object doesn’t work — thus, you need to make sure you always stay on the same side. There’s a good discussion on the mailing list archive about how it works and why, as well a weird alternative documented on the Selenium JavaDocs
[...] 3 – Finally on the DLR! and Did you know PowerShell can use Selenium? (Joel [...]
strange. i’m getting an error opening the 3.5 driver.
New-Object : Exception calling “.ctor” with “0” argument(s): “Unexpected error launching Internet Explorer. Protected M
[New-Object], MethodInvocationException
ode must be set to the same value (enabled or disabled) for all zones. (NoSuchDriver)”
At line:1 char:21
+ $driver = New-Object <<<< OpenQA.Selenium.IE.InternetExplorerDriver
+ CategoryInfo : InvalidOperation: (
+ FullyQualifiedErrorId : ConstructorInvokedThrowException,Microsoft.PowerShell.Commands.NewObjectCommand
Yeah, for the sake of everyone else who comes along later, I’ll add the information about that to my post above, because I had that same problem.
ah never mind i figured it out… best to read documentations before diving in head first
Haha wise words
[...] you know PowerShell can use [...]