New features of SeleniumLibrary 4

Cerosh Jacob

Oct 29, 2019·3 min read

SeleniumLibrary 4.0.0 was released on Friday, September 20, 2019. SeleniumLibrary supports Python 2.7 and Python 3.4+, Selenium 3.8.2 and Robot Framework 3.0.4 and Robot Framework 3.1.2. The latest SeleniumLibrary version is 4.1.0. Before jumping into the feature list commands for updating the SeleniumLibrary version.

pip3 list

Understand the version of SeleniumLibrary already installed.

pip3 show robotframework-seleniumlibrary

Understand the location of SeleniumLibrary already installed.

pip3 install --upgrade robotframework-seleniumlibrary

The library would be updated and after that, if the new keywords are still not found check the referenced libraries of SeleniumLibrary in red.xml

Reviewing only the most important and recent features of SeleniumLibrary and the list is not exhaustive.

Open Browser    ${url}    chrome    alias=${alias}

alias is an alias given for the browser instance and it can be used for switching between browsers. When theOpen Browser keyword is used initially a new browser is opened, but when the keyword is called again a new browser is not opened instead will switch to the already opened browser.

Get Browser Aliases

This new keyword returns a dictionary which contains aliases of all active browsers as keys and the index as value.

Get Browser Ids

This is another keyword which would be handy while working with multiple browsers. Get Browser Ids keyword returns the index of all active browser as a list.

Wait Until Location Contains    ${expected}Wait Until Location Is    ${expected}

This is another keyword to the already rich wait until collection. When the exact expected value is not known the keyword Wait Until Location Contains is used and use Wait Until Location Is keyword to validate the exact expected value.

${width}    ${height}=    Get Window Size    True

Set Window Size    ${width}    ${height}    True

The window innerWidth innerHeight are read-only properties in DOM which represents the browser windows content area in pixels. When the newly introduced inner parameter is set to True, then the keyword modifies the HTML DOM window.innerWidth and window.innerHeight. So by using Get Window Size and Set Window Size in conjunction, the hardcoding of screen size can be avoided. This inner argument does not support frames. If a frame is selected, switch to default before using the keywords.

Input Text    //*[@class=’gLFyf gsfi’]    update    clear=TrueInput Password //*[@class=’gLFyf gsfi’]    update    clear=True

By setting the value to true to newly introduced clear argument the input element is cleared before the new text is typed into the element. When false, the updated text is appended to the existing text and the previous text is not cleared from the element. This is applicable while inserting the password as well.

Deprecated

Along with the introduction of many new keywords some mostly used keywords got deprecated as well. Since they were indicated in the previous version assume the impact is minimal but the alternative is more efficient and powerful.

Locator Should Match X Times    //*[@class=’gLFyf gsfi’]    1

The recommendation is to use the Page Should Contain Element keyword with the limit argument.

Press Key    //*[@class=’gLFyf gsfi’]    a

The recommendation is to use the Press Keys keywords which have a lot more options.

Select Window    locator=MAIN    timeout=None

The Switch Window keyword which has optional arguments like locator, timeout and browser can do a lot more things than its predecessor with a lot of flexibility.

Based on the above facts and a months usage experience recommendation is to upgrade SeleniumLibrary to a version greater than 4.