Web automation is a complex and fragile task, with many ways to go wrong. This article describes some common errors and pitfalls, and how you might go about resolving them.
Starting the client
If initializing a SeleniumSession fails, it is often
useful to look at the logs from the server. If you ran the
java -jar ... command manually, then you should be able to
see the logs, but if you used selenium_server(), then you
can use the read_output() and read_error()
methods to read the logs.
server <- selenium_server()
server$read_output()
server$read_error()This will show any output/errors that the server has written to the console.
Timeout
Sometimes, the server can just take a very long time to start up. If
you get an error from wait_for_server(), or
wait_for_selenium_available(), it can be worth increasing
the max_time argument to something higher than 60, and
seeing if that fixes the issue.
Wrong Java version
If starting the server results in an error, and
wait_for_server(), server$read_error() or the
logs show an error similar to:
... java.lang.UnsupportedClassVersionError: {file} has been compiled by a more recent version of the Java Runtime ...
This probably means that you need to update your Java version. Selenium’s minimum version is now Java 11 (see https://www.selenium.dev/blog/2023/java-8-support/). You can find later versions of Java here
Port and IP address
One reason why you can’t connect to the server is that the port and IP address you are using is wrong.
To get the IP address and port number that the server is using, you
need to look at the server logs. You should see a line like:
INFO [Standalone.execute] - Started Selenium Standalone ... (revision ...): http://<IP>:<PORT>
The URL at the end of this message can be used to extract an IP
address and a port number, which can then be passed into the
host and port arguments. For example, if the
URL was: http://172.17.0.1/4444, you would run:
session <- SeleniumSession$new(host = "172.17.0.1", port = 4444)Using a different debugging port for Chrome
If you are using Chrome, and you see a browser open, but the call to
SeleniumSession$new() times out, you may need to use a
different debugging port. For example:
session <- SeleniumSession$new(
browser = "chrome",
capabilities = list(
`goog:chromeOptions` = list(
args = list("remote-debugging-port=9222")
)
)
)Increasing /dev/shm/ size when using docker
If you are running selenium using docker, you may need to increase
the size of /dev/shm/ to avoid running out of memory. This
issue usually happens when using Chrome, and usually results in a
message like session deleted because of page crash.
You can use the --shm-size to the selenium docker images
to fix this issue. For example:
docker run --shm-size="2g" selenium/standalone-chrome:<version>
Other common errors
Stale element reference errors
At some point, when using selenium, you will encounter the following error:
#> Error in `element$click()`:
#> ! Stale element reference.
#> ✖ The element with the reference <...> is not known in the current browsing context
#> Caused by error in `httr2::req_perform()`:
#> ! HTTP 404 Not Found.
#> Run `rlang::last_trace()` to see where the error occurred.This error is common when automating a website. Selenium is telling you that an element which you previously identified no longer exists. In all websites, especially complex ones, the DOM will be constantly updating itself, constantly invalidating references to elements. This error is a particularly annoying one, as it can happen at any time and is impossible to predict.
One way to deal with this error is to use elements as soon as they are created, only keeping references to elements if you are sure that they will not be invalidated. For example, if you want to click the same element twice, with a second-long gap in between, you may want to consider fetching the element once for each time, rather than sharing the reference between the actions.
However, this solution is not infallible. If you find yourself encountering this error a lot, it may be a sign that a more high-level package, that can deal with this issue (e.g. selenider), is needed.