title: “Shared capabilities”
weight: 1
In-order to create a new session by Selenium WebDriver,
local end should provide the basic capabilities to remote end.
The remote end uses the same set of capabilities to
create a session and describes the current session features.
WebDriver provides capabilities that each remote
end will/should support the implementation.
Following are the capabilities that WebDriver supports:
browserName:
This capability is used to set the browserName for a given session.
If the specified browser is not installed at the
remote end, the session creation will fail
browserVersion:
This capability is optional, this is used to
set the available browser version at remote end.
For Example, if ask for Chrome version 75 on a system that
only has 80 installed, the session creation will fail
pageLoadStrategy:
When navigating to a new page via URL, by default Selenium will wait
until the page has fully loaded before responding. This works well for
beginners, but can cause long wait times on pages that load a large
number of third party resources. Using a non default strategy can make
test execution faster in cases like this, but can also introduce flakiness
where elements on the page change position as elements load in and change
size.
The page load strategy queries the
document.readyState
as described in the table below:
| Strategy | Ready State | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| normal | complete | Used by default, waits for all resources to download |
| eager | interactive | DOM access is ready, but other resources like images may still be loading |
| none | Any | Does not block WebDriver at all |
platformName
This identifies the operating system at the remote-end,
fetching the platformName returns the OS name.
In cloud-based providers,
setting platformName sets the OS at the remote-end.
acceptInsecureCerts
This capability checks whether an expired (or)
invalid TLS Certificate is used while navigating
during a session.
If the capability is set to false, an
insecure certificate error
will be returned as navigation encounters any domain
certificate problems. If set to true, invalid certificate will be
trusted by the browser.
All self-signed certificates will be trusted by this capability by default.
Once set, acceptInsecureCerts capability will have an
effect for the entire session.
Session timeouts
A WebDriver session is imposed with a certain session timeout
interval, during which the user can control the behaviour
of executing scripts or retrieving information from the browser.
Each session timeout is configured with
combination of different timeouts as described below:
Script Timeout:
Specifies when to interrupt an executing script in
a current browsing context. The default timeout 30,000
is imposed when a new session is created by WebDriver.
Page Load Timeout:
Specifies the time interval in which web page
needs to be loaded in a current browsing context.
The default timeout 300,000 is imposed when a
new session is created by WebDriver. If page load limits
a given/default time frame, the script will be stopped by
TimeoutException.
Implicit Wait Timeout
This specifies the time to wait for the
implicit element location strategy when
locating elements. The default timeout 0
is imposed when a new session is created by WebDriver.
unhandledPromptBehavior
Specifies the state of current session’s user prompt handler.
Defaults to dismiss and notify state
User Prompt Handler
This defines what action must take when a
user prompt encounters at remote-end. This is defined by
unhandledPromptBehavior capability and has the following states:
- dismiss
- accept
- dismiss and notify
- accept and notify
- ignore
setWindowRect
This command alters the size and position of the current
browsing context window. This command acts as setter
to getWindowRect command which accepts width, height,
x, y as optional arguments.
During automation, the current browsing context will be associated
with window states, that describe visibility
state of the browser window. The window states are
- maximized
- minimized
- normal
- fullscreen
Setting Width or Height does not guaranteed that the resulting
window size will exactly match that which was quested. This is because
some drivers may not be able to resize in single-pixel increments.
Due to this, fetching the window state/details by getWindowRect
may not equally match the values set to the browser.
strictFileInteractability
The new capability indicates if strict interactability checks
should be applied to input type=file elements. As strict interactability
checks are off by default, there is a change in behaviour
when using Element Send Keys with hidden file upload controls.