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selenium-r

Low-Level Browser Automation Interface

https://github.com/ashbythorpe/selenium-r

Science Score: 26.0%

This score indicates how likely this project is to be science-related based on various indicators:

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    CITATION.cff file
  • ✓
    codemeta.json file
    Found codemeta.json file
  • ✓
    .zenodo.json file
    Found .zenodo.json file
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    DOI references
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    Scientific vocabulary similarity
    Low similarity (16.6%) to scientific vocabulary
Last synced: 10 months ago · JSON representation

Repository

Low-Level Browser Automation Interface

Basic Info
Statistics
  • Stars: 20
  • Watchers: 2
  • Forks: 2
  • Open Issues: 0
  • Releases: 3
Created over 2 years ago · Last pushed 12 months ago
Metadata Files
Readme Changelog License Codemeta

README.Rmd 

---
output: github_document
---



```{r, include = FALSE}
available <- selenium::selenium_server_available()
knitr::opts_chunk$set(
  collapse = TRUE,
  comment = "#>",
  fig.path = "man/figures/README-",
  out.width = "100%",
  eval = available
)
```

```{r eval = !available, echo = FALSE, comment = NA}
if (!available) {
  message("Selenium server is not available.")
}
```

# selenium


[![R-CMD-check](https://github.com/ashbythorpe/selenium-r/actions/workflows/R-CMD-check.yaml/badge.svg)](https://github.com/ashbythorpe/selenium-r/actions/workflows/R-CMD-check.yaml)
[![CRAN status](https://www.r-pkg.org/badges/version/selenium)](https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=selenium)


selenium is a tool for the automation of web browsers. It is a low-level interface 
to the [WebDriver](https://w3c.github.io/webdriver/) specification, and an up-to-date
alternative to [RSelenium](https://github.com/ropensci/RSelenium).

## Installation

``` {r eval = FALSE}
# Install selenider from CRAN
install.packages("selenium")

# Or the development version from Github
# install.packages("pak")
pak::pak("ashbythorpe/selenium-r")
```

However, you must also have a selenium server installed and running (see below).

## Starting the server
A selenium instance consists of two parts: the client and the server.
The selenium package *only provides the client*. This means that you
have to start the server yourself. 

To do this you must:

* Install a browser that you want to automate (e.g. Chrome, Firefox, Edge).
* Download [Java](https://www.oracle.com/java/technologies/downloads/) (you need Java 11 or higher).

There are many different ways to download and start the server, one of which
is provided by selenium:

```{r setup}
library(selenium)
```

```{r eval = FALSE}
server <- selenium_server()
```

This will download the latest version of the server and start it.

By default, the server file will be stored in a temporary directory, meaning it
will be deleted when the session is closed. If you want the server to persist,
meaning that you don't have to re-download the server each time, you can use
the `temp` argument:

``` {r eval = FALSE}
server <- selenium_server(temp = FALSE)
```

You can also do this manually if you want:

1. Download the latest `.jar` file for Selenium Server. Do this by navigating to
   the latest GitHub release page (),
   scrolling down to the **Assets** section, and downloading the file named 
   `selenium-server-standalone-.jar` (with `` being the latest release version).
2. Make sure you are in the same directory as the file you downloaded.
3. In the terminal, run `java -jar selenium-server-standalone-.jar standalone --selenium-manager true`,
   replacing `` with the version number that you downloaded. This will download
   any drivers you need to communicate with the server and the browser, and start the server.

There are a few other ways of starting Selenium Server:

* Using docker to start the server. See .
  This is recommended in a non-interactive context (e.g. GitHub Actions).
* Using the `wdman` package to start the server from R, using `wdman::selenium()`. Note
  that at the time of writing, this package does not work with the latest version of
  Chrome.

## Waiting for the server to be online

The Selenium server won't be ready to be used immediately. If you used
`selenium_server()` to create your server, you can pass it into
`wait_for_server()`:

``` {r eval = FALSE}
wait_for_server(server)
```

You can also use `server$read_output()` and `server$read_error()`

If you used a different method to create your server, use
`wait_for_selenium_available()` instead.

``` {r eval = FALSE}
wait_for_selenium_available()
```

If any point in this process produces an error or doesn't work, please see the
[Debugging Selenium](https://ashbythorpe.github.io/selenium-r/articles/debugging.html)
article for more information.

## Starting the client

Client sessions can be started using `SeleniumSession$new()`
``` {r eval = FALSE}
session <- SeleniumSession$new()
```

By default, this will connect to Firefox, but you can use the `browser` argument to specify
a different browser if you like.

```{r session}
session <- SeleniumSession$new(browser = "chrome")
```

## Usage

Once the session has been successfully started, you can use the session
object to control the browser. Here, we dynamically navigate through
the R project homepage. Remember to close the session and the server process
when you are done.

```{r example}
session$navigate("https://www.r-project.org/")
session$
  find_element(using = "css selector", value = ".row")$
  find_element(using = "css selector", value = "ul")$
  find_element(using = "css selector", value = "a")$
  click()

session$
  find_element(using = "css selector", value = ".row")$
  find_elements(using = "css selector", value = "div")[[2]]$
  find_element(using = "css selector", value = "p")$
  get_text()

session$close()
```
``` {r eval = FALSE}
server$kill()
```

For a more detailed introduction to using selenium, see the
[Getting Started](https://ashbythorpe.github.io/selenium-r/articles/selenium.html)
article.

Note that selenium is low-level and mainly aimed towards developers. If you are
wanting to use browser automation for web scraping or testing, you may want to
take a look at [selenider](https://github.com/ashbythorpe/selenider) instead.

Owner

  • Name: Ashby Thorpe
  • Login: ashbythorpe
  • Kind: user

R enthusiast

CodeMeta (codemeta.json) 

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GitHub Events

Total
  • Create event: 4
  • Release event: 1
  • Issues event: 5
  • Watch event: 4
  • Delete event: 2
  • Issue comment event: 7
  • Push event: 13
  • Pull request event: 5
Last Year
  • Create event: 4
  • Release event: 1
  • Issues event: 5
  • Watch event: 4
  • Delete event: 2
  • Issue comment event: 7
  • Push event: 13
  • Pull request event: 5

Issues and Pull Requests

Last synced: 10 months ago

Packages

  • Total packages: 1
  • Total downloads:
    • cran 351 last-month
  • Total dependent packages: 1
  • Total dependent repositories: 0
  • Total versions: 4
  • Total maintainers: 1
cran.r-project.org: selenium

Low-Level Browser Automation Interface

  • Versions: 4
  • Dependent Packages: 1
  • Dependent Repositories: 0
  • Downloads: 351 Last month
Rankings
Forks count: 28.0%
Dependent packages count: 29.0%
Stargazers count: 34.7%
Dependent repos count: 37.0%
Average: 43.1%
Downloads: 86.8%
Maintainers (1)
ashbythorpe@gmail.com
Last synced: 10 months ago