Search code examples
seleniumwatirselenium-chromedriver

Launch Watir/Selenium Chrome driver binary from an arbitrary location

I want to use Watir to start a chrome for an older version of chrome, say /Application/Google Chrome 30.app

Here's a ref link saying chromedriver expects Chrome install at specific location:

Mac /Applications/Google\ Chrome.app/Contents/MacOS/Google\ Chrome

Here's a ref link for setting up Chrome executable in a non-standard location

ChromeOptions options = new ChromeOptions();
options.setBinary("/path/to/other/chrome/binary");

How can I do that using Watir, given syntax like

driver = Watir::Browser.new :chrome

Thanks!

Solution

  • Set Binary For Specific Browser Instance

    The Chrome options can be passed from Watir to Selenium using the :desired_capabilities as "chromeOptions":

    caps = {"chromeOptions" => {"binary" => 'C:\Program Files (x86)\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe'}}
browser = Watir::Browser.new(:chrome, desired_capabilities: caps)

    Note about the binary value (from the Chromedriver page):

    Path to the Chrome executable to use (on Mac OS X, this should be the actual binary, not just the app. e.g., '/Applications/Google Chrome.app/Contents/MacOS/Google Chrome')

    Set Default Binary

    Instead of setting the binary for each browser, you can also set the default binary location:

    Selenium::WebDriver::Chrome.path = 'C:\Program Files (x86)\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe'
browser = Watir::Browser.new :chrome