session not created: This version of ChromeDriver

Question

I'm trying to run RSelenium using the rsDriver function, but when I run rD <- rsDriver() I get a message telling me I need a newer version of Chrome:

> rD <- rsDriver()
checking Selenium Server versions:
BEGIN: PREDOWNLOAD
BEGIN: DOWNLOAD
BEGIN: POSTDOWNLOAD
checking chromedriver versions:
BEGIN: PREDOWNLOAD
BEGIN: DOWNLOAD
BEGIN: POSTDOWNLOAD
checking geckodriver versions:
BEGIN: PREDOWNLOAD
BEGIN: DOWNLOAD
BEGIN: POSTDOWNLOAD
checking phantomjs versions:
BEGIN: PREDOWNLOAD
BEGIN: DOWNLOAD
BEGIN: POSTDOWNLOAD
[1] "Connecting to remote server"

Selenium message:session not created: This version of ChromeDriver only supports Chrome version 74
  (Driver info: chromedriver=74.0.3729.6 (255758eccf3d244491b8a1317aa76e1ce10d57e9-refs/branch-heads/3729@{#29}),platform=Mac OS X 10.14.3 x86_64)

Could not open chrome browser.
Client error message:
     Summary: SessionNotCreatedException
     Detail: A new session could not be created.
     Further Details: run errorDetails method
Check server log for further details.

The error message appears to say that I need Chrome version 74.0.3729.6, but when I look in Chrome's settings, it tells me that I'm running the latest stable version (73.0.3683.75). Upon further googling, 74.0.3729.6 is a pre-release dev version of Chrome: do I need to install this in order to use ChromeDriver with RSelenium?

I'm not wedded to the idea of using Chrome, but I haven't been able to get rsDriver to use Firefox: when I specify browser = "firefox", rsDriver gives me the same error message about ChromeDriver not supporting my version of Chrome.

My session info is:

R version 3.5.2 (2018-12-20)
Platform: x86_64-apple-darwin15.6.0 (64-bit)
Running under: macOS Mojave 10.14.3

Matrix products: default
BLAS: /System/Library/Frameworks/Accelerate.framework/Versions/A/Frameworks/vecLib.framework/Versions/A/libBLAS.dylib
LAPACK: /Library/Frameworks/R.framework/Versions/3.5/Resources/lib/libRlapack.dylib

locale:
[1] en_GB.UTF-8/en_GB.UTF-8/en_GB.UTF-8/C/en_GB.UTF-8/en_GB.UTF-8

attached base packages:
[1] stats     graphics  grDevices utils     datasets  methods   base     

other attached packages:
 [1] wdman_0.2.4     forcats_0.3.0   stringr_1.3.1   dplyr_0.7.8     purrr_0.2.5     readr_1.3.1     tidyr_0.8.2    
 [8] tibble_2.0.1    ggplot2_3.1.0   tidyverse_1.2.1 rvest_0.3.2     xml2_1.2.0      RSelenium_1.7.5

Answer 1

I was facing the same error:

session not created: This version of ChromeDriver only supports Chrome version 75

...

Driver info: driver.version: ChromeDriver

We are running the tests from a computer that has no real UI, so I had to work via a command line (CLI).

I started by detecting the current version of Chrome that was installed on the Linux computer:

$> google-chrome --version

And got this response:

Google Chrome 74.0.3729.169

So then I updated the Chrome version like that:

$> sudo apt-get install google-chrome-stable

And after checking again the version I got this:

Google Chrome 75.0.3770.100

Then the Selenium tests were able to run smoothly.

Answer 2

I just ran into the same kind of error using RSelenium::rsDriver()'s default chromever = "latest" setting which resulted in the failed attempt to combine chromedriver 75.0.3770.8 with latest google-chrome-stable 74.0.3729.157:

session not created: This version of ChromeDriver only supports Chrome version 75

Since this obviously seems to be a recurring and pretty annoying issue, I have come up with the following workaround to always use the latest compatible ChromeDriver version:

rD <- RSelenium::rsDriver(browser = "chrome",
                          chromever =
                                  system2(command = "google-chrome-stable",
                                          args = "--version",
                                          stdout = TRUE,
                                          stderr = TRUE) %>%
                                  stringr::str_extract(pattern = "(?<=Chrome )\\d+\\.\\d+\\.\\d+\\.") %>%
                                  magrittr::extract(!is.na(.)) %>%
                                  stringr::str_replace_all(pattern = "\\.",
                                                           replacement = "\\\\.") %>%
                                  paste0("^",  .) %>%
                                  stringr::str_subset(string =
                                                              binman::list_versions(appname = "chromedriver") %>%
                                                              dplyr::last()) %>%
                                  as.numeric_version() %>%
                                  max() %>%
                                  as.character())

The above code is only tested under Linux and makes use of some tidyverse packages (install them beforehand or rewrite it in base R). For other operating systems you might have to adapt it a bit, particularly replace command = "google-chrome-stable" with the system-specific command to launch Google Chrome:

• On macOS it should be enough to replace command = "google-chrome-stable" with command = "/Applications/Google\ Chrome.app/Contents/MacOS/Google\ Chrome" (untested).

• On Windows a plattform-specific bug prevents us from calling the Google Chrome binary directly to get its version number. Instead do the following:

  rD <- RSelenium::rsDriver(browser = "chrome",
                            chromever =
                              system2(command = "wmic",
                                      args = 'datafile where name="C:\\\\Program Files (x86)\\\\Google\\\\Chrome\\\\Application\\\\chrome.exe" get Version /value',
                                      stdout = TRUE,
                                      stderr = TRUE) %>%
                              stringr::str_extract(pattern = "(?<=Version=)\\d+\\.\\d+\\.\\d+\\.") %>%
                              magrittr::extract(!is.na(.)) %>%
                              stringr::str_replace_all(pattern = "\\.", replacement = "\\\\.") %>%
                              paste0("^",  .) %>%
                              stringr::str_subset(string = binman::list_versions(appname = "chromedriver") %>%
                                                    dplyr::last()) %>%
                              as.numeric_version() %>%
                              max() %>%
                              as.character())
  

Basically, the code just ensures the latest ChromeDriver version matching the major-minor-patch version number of the system's stable Google Chrome browser is passed as chromever argument. This procedure should adhere to the official ChromeDriver versioning scheme. Quote:

• ChromeDriver uses the same version number scheme as Chrome (...)
• Each version of ChromeDriver supports Chrome with matching major, minor, and build version numbers. For example, ChromeDriver 73.0.3683.20 supports all Chrome versions that start with 73.0.3683.

Answer 3

Travis CI alternative

Another answer since Francesco Borzi's didn't work for me.

Add this to your travis.yml:

addons:
  chrome: stable

before_script:
  - LATEST_CHROMEDRIVER_VERSION=`curl -s "https://chromedriver.storage.googleapis.com/LATEST_RELEASE"`
  - curl "https://chromedriver.storage.googleapis.com/${LATEST_CHROMEDRIVER_VERSION}/chromedriver_linux64.zip" -O
  - unzip chromedriver_linux64.zip -d ~/bin

Many thanks and credit to tagliala on github:

https://github.com/diowa/ruby2-rails5-bootstrap-heroku/commit/6ba95f33f922895090d3fabc140816db67b09672