How to run Selenium tests on Chrome using ChromeDriver

How to run Selenium tests on
Chrome using ChromeDriver?
In this fast-paced technical world, everybody is looking for a
way to execute web automation testing faster. Selenium
Chrome Driver can help us achieve this.
This is the perfect way to make the web automation tests
execute faster. So let’s get started to know how we can
achieve it.
Google Chrome is the industry leader in executing selenium
automation tests because it is one of the most popular web

browsers used globally. With its widespread use and global
coverage, evaluating web applications and websites on the
Chrome browser is very critical and essential. Since Selenium
offers cross-browser functionality, it is a preferred tool for test
automation. Developers can run Selenium tests on Chrome
using the Selenium ChromeDriver. You can run Selenium
tests on Chrome once the ChromeDriver is configured.
In this article, we will focus mainly on using ChromeDriver for
Selenium. You will learn how to install, configure, and
download ChromeDriver for Windows. Let’s look at how to run
Selenium tests on Chrome.
What is Selenium and Selenium
ChromeDriver?
Selenium is an open-source automation testing framework to
test web applications using web browser interactions. It
supports various browsers like Chrome, Firefox, Internet
Explorer and safari.
We use Chrome Driver with Selenium in order to execute tests
on the Chrome browser. Chrome Drivers are executable
drivers used by Selenium WebDriver to launch Google
Chrome. Chrome Driver is also an open source and we can run

the tests on Chrome Browsers by configuring it as per our
requirement.
How to download and configure
ChromeDriver for Selenium?
Chrome Driver implements W3C WebDriver standards and
protocols. To use Chrome Driver, we must first download it
from the Chromium website, install it on the system, and set
up the project.
To configure Chrome Driver in the code, we use the below line
of code:
WebDriver driver = new ChromeDriver()
Chrome Browser implements the WebDriver Interface. We
need Chromedriver.exe to start the server on the system that
runs the test scripts in Selenium.
Configuring Selenium ChromeDriver using
Environment Variables?
We can declare system level variables for Chrome Driver so
that whenever a webdriver instance is created in Selenium
script, it automatically detects the path of the Chrome Driver
and runs on it.

Step 1. Once the ChromeDriver executable file is extracted and
moved to the folder location, copy that location and set its
path in the System’s environment variables.
Step 2. open “System Properties” pop up. Click on the
“Environment Variables” button. In System Variables section,
click on Path variable and then click on the Edit button.

Step 3: On the Edit environment variable pop-up, click on the
“New” button and add the ChromeDriver executable location.
Step4:Click on OK to save the configuration.

Step 5. When we create an instance of ChromeDriver in the
script, it will automatically detect the ChromeDriver path from
the system variables and run the tests on the Chrome
browser.
Configuring Selenium ChromeDriver using
System.setProperty method?
There is another way to configure ChromeDriver in the test
script that is configuring using code explicitly using
System.setProperty() method
This method accepts key value pair where
key is “webdriver.chrome.driver” and value is the path of the
ChromeDriver executable file that is chromedriver.exe
System.setProperty(“webdriver.chrome.driver”,”path of the
chromedriver.exe”)
Running Selenium tests on Chrome
Steps to run Selenium Tests on Chrome Browser
1. In any IDE, create a Java Project and Add Selenium Java
Jars in the java build path.
2. Create a Java class and write the below code to launch
Chrome browser.

Delete the System.setProperty() line from the above code if
ChromeDriver is configured in the environment variable.
Code Walkthrough:
1. Set the system property “webdriver.chrome.driver” to the
path of your ChromeDriver.exe file and instantiate a
ChromeDriver class:
System.setProperty(“webdriver.chrome.driver”,”chromedr
iver path”);
2. Maximize the window:
driver.manage().window().maximize();
3. To open the URL: driver.get(“URL link”)
Configuring Selenium WebDriver with
WebDriver Manager
WebDriverManager provides an API using the class
WebDriverManager (package io.github.bonigarcia.wdm). This
class provides a group of static methods to create managers,

i.e., objects devoted to providing automated driver
management and other features.
The primary use of WebDriverManager is the automation of
driver management. To use this feature, you need to select a
given manager in the WebDriverManager API (e.g.,
chromedriver() for Chrome) and invoke the method setup().
Let us see how to invoke the browser using WebDriver
Manager:
Add the below dependency to the pom.xml
Below line of code invokes the chrome browser using
WebDriverManager.
Conclusion
Selenium and Chrome browsers are the most common
combinations for testing web applications across the globe.

Selenium automates the testing of web applications, and with
its support for the Google Chrome browser, ChromeDriver has
become one of the most popular drivers. Even though we can
use ChromeDriver without any additional configuration, we
have understood how to get the most out of ChromeDriver by
configuring it.
Source : this article was originally published at testgrid.io.