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Selenium is the leading open-source browser automation framework that has been
developed by a large community over the past twenty years.
The project is overseen by a group of core contributors who are responsible for
maintaining the codebase and making decisions about the project's direction.
The Selenium project is not owned or controlled by any single company, and it
is supported by a diverse group of contributors from around the world.
WebDriver
The protocol/automation interface used by Selenium is WebDriver. Originally
developed as part of Selenium, WebDriver became a W3C standard in 2011, which now
oversees its specifications and development.
Any driver implementing the WebDriver standard can be used transparently by Selenium,
which not only includes all the Web Browsers, but there are additional
WebDriver implementations, for instance those developed by Appium, which means the same
Selenium scripts can be used to drive both native and WebView-based mobile applications,
desktop applications, and even games.
Selenium Manager
Driving a browser with Selenium requires the WebDriver implementation for that
browser and, of course, the browser itself. Historically, this was left for the
user to ensure that the browsers and drivers, with matching versions, were available
at test time. There have been several efforts to provide tools to automate this
process or part of it, notably WebDriver Manager which could provision the
WebDriver implementations automatically.
Starting with Selenium 4.11.0, Selenium itself contains a new component called Selenium Manager. The role Selenium Manager is to automatically provision,
just in time, the correct versions of both browsers and their drivers. This process
is completely transparent to the user who needs to take no additional steps to
enable or invoke Selenium Manager. Merely invoking Selenium will cause Selenium Manager
to detect that drivers and/or browsers are required, and download the correct versions.
Selenium Manager has the additional benefit as the browsers and drivers are not
statically baked into a runtime environment, for instance a test runner or container.
This gives users full control over the versions they are using to run their tests,
whether that being fixed versions or being able to always test against the latest
browser without having to set them up or re-build container images.
Selenium Manager is a separate binary application invoked by the Selenium
runtime, meaning that it is not dependent on any particular language's Selenium
implementation so it is available to the Python version and so, by extension,
to Robot automation scripts.
Playwright
Background
Playwright is a source-available test automation tool for web applications
developed by Microsoft in 2019, which is the sole company overseeing its development
and governance. It has a much smaller ecosystem of tools
and integrations available, and few community-led projects.
Unlike Selenium, which is based around libraries and open standards,
Playwright is much less flexible, and the test runner support is
limited, precluding users from using their usual tools and trapping
them in a walled garden.
Certain Playwright features, such as network inspection and advanced
multi-tab/multi-page support, are not accessible through the RPA.Playwright library. However, these features are often more
relevant for testing rather than automation.
DevTools protocol
Unlike Selenium, which follows the WebDriver standard,
Playwright uses proprietary extensions to the DevTools protocol,
limiting its flexibility. As a result, Playwright is restricted in
what it can automate.
WebDriver implementations for the main
web browsers are usually developed and released by the browsers
themselves to ensure compatibility and that there are drivers
available as new versions are released, as most browsers today
are on a rapid release cycle.
Playwright only supports driving Chromium, Firefox, and WebKit.
Additional browsers, and the ability to drive mobile or desktop
applications are not supported. The browser support is provided
solely by the Playwright project, meaning users rely entirely on
Microsoft to develop, release, and maintain browser support.
Robot and rfBrowser
Playwright lacks an equivalent to Selenium Manager, so browsers must be
provisioned in advance. There is a third-party RobotFramework Browser
project which provides the rfBrowser utility in order to help
users install various browsers into the correct locations for
Playwright. (This tool is associated neither with Playwright
nor the RPAFramework project, and is a community effort).
The rfBrowser tool requires a Node.js environment. While we could
feasibly provide this in a container-based distribution of the
RPA Worker, it would be difficult to provision in the standalone
version. Additionally, even if we were able to provide the rfBrowser tool, the user would still have to manually set up
the browsers (on each separate host that will run the RPA Worker)
by hand, as we would have no information as to which browsers at
which versions to install for them.
As well as meaning that the choice of version could not be controlled
through the script alone, the user would have to re-run this tool again
when they wish to change or upgrade the browsers that are being
used by their Robot automations.
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Browser Automation
Selenium
Background
Selenium is the leading open-source browser automation framework that has been
developed by a large community over the past twenty years.
The project is overseen by a group of core contributors who are responsible for
maintaining the codebase and making decisions about the project's direction.
The Selenium project is not owned or controlled by any single company, and it
is supported by a diverse group of contributors from around the world.
WebDriver
The protocol/automation interface used by Selenium is WebDriver. Originally
developed as part of Selenium, WebDriver became a W3C standard in 2011, which now
oversees its specifications and development.
Any driver implementing the WebDriver standard can be used transparently by Selenium,
which not only includes all the Web Browsers, but there are additional
WebDriver implementations, for instance those developed by Appium, which means the same
Selenium scripts can be used to drive both native and WebView-based mobile applications,
desktop applications, and even games.
Selenium Manager
Driving a browser with Selenium requires the WebDriver implementation for that
browser and, of course, the browser itself. Historically, this was left for the
user to ensure that the browsers and drivers, with matching versions, were available
at test time. There have been several efforts to provide tools to automate this
process or part of it, notably WebDriver Manager which could provision the
WebDriver implementations automatically.
Starting with Selenium 4.11.0, Selenium itself contains a new component called
Selenium Manager. The role Selenium Manager is to automatically provision,
just in time, the correct versions of both browsers and their drivers. This process
is completely transparent to the user who needs to take no additional steps to
enable or invoke Selenium Manager. Merely invoking Selenium will cause Selenium Manager
to detect that drivers and/or browsers are required, and download the correct versions.
Selenium Manager has the additional benefit as the browsers and drivers are not
statically baked into a runtime environment, for instance a test runner or container.
This gives users full control over the versions they are using to run their tests,
whether that being fixed versions or being able to always test against the latest
browser without having to set them up or re-build container images.
Selenium Manager is a separate binary application invoked by the Selenium
runtime, meaning that it is not dependent on any particular language's Selenium
implementation so it is available to the Python version and so, by extension,
to Robot automation scripts.
Playwright
Background
Playwright is a source-available test automation tool for web applications
developed by Microsoft in 2019, which is the sole company overseeing its development
and governance. It has a much smaller ecosystem of tools
and integrations available, and few community-led projects.
Unlike Selenium, which is based around libraries and open standards,
Playwright is much less flexible, and the test runner support is
limited, precluding users from using their usual tools and trapping
them in a walled garden.
Certain Playwright features, such as network inspection and advanced
multi-tab/multi-page support, are not accessible through the
RPA.Playwrightlibrary. However, these features are often morerelevant for testing rather than automation.
DevTools protocol
Unlike Selenium, which follows the WebDriver standard,
Playwright uses proprietary extensions to the DevTools protocol,
limiting its flexibility. As a result, Playwright is restricted in
what it can automate.
WebDriver implementations for the main
web browsers are usually developed and released by the browsers
themselves to ensure compatibility and that there are drivers
available as new versions are released, as most browsers today
are on a rapid release cycle.
Playwright only supports driving Chromium, Firefox, and WebKit.
Additional browsers, and the ability to drive mobile or desktop
applications are not supported. The browser support is provided
solely by the Playwright project, meaning users rely entirely on
Microsoft to develop, release, and maintain browser support.
Robot and rfBrowser
Playwright lacks an equivalent to Selenium Manager, so browsers must be
provisioned in advance. There is a third-party
RobotFramework Browser
project which provides the
rfBrowserutility in order to helpusers install various browsers into the correct locations for
Playwright. (This tool is associated neither with Playwright
nor the RPAFramework project, and is a community effort).
The
rfBrowsertool requires a Node.js environment. While we couldfeasibly provide this in a container-based distribution of the
RPA Worker, it would be difficult to provision in the standalone
version. Additionally, even if we were able to provide the
rfBrowsertool, the user would still have to manually set upthe browsers (on each separate host that will run the RPA Worker)
by hand, as we would have no information as to which browsers at
which versions to install for them.
As well as meaning that the choice of version could not be controlled
through the script alone, the user would have to re-run this tool again
when they wish to change or upgrade the browsers that are being
used by their Robot automations.
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