Better typings Support for the webdriver api

[KrauseStefan]

Feature Request

Better typings Support for the webdriver api

Currently many of the webdriver functions specified in the selenium api are not possible to use with the new protractor typings. I see why you might want to hide some of the api, however a lot is missing right now.

We upgraded to 4.0.2 and want to use the new typings however we are unable to as long as parts of the api is missing. (at least in a easy and clean way)

We specifically use

  executeScript: (script: string) => webdriver.promise.Promise<any[]>;
  manage: () => Options;

But more can be found her: http://seleniumhq.github.io/selenium/docs/api/javascript/module/selenium-webdriver/index_exports_WebDriver.html

As a small note shouldn't

export class Webdriver {

}

be an interface instead? I believe an interface would be possible to extend without changes code in the protractor module.

Let me know if you are interested in a pull request

[cnishina]

I thought I had this as an opened issue...I probably wrote my plan in a Google Doc. Anyway, I am trying to upgrade the DefinitelyTyped selenium-webdriver ambient typings. Using an up-to-date selenium-webdriver ambient typings will fix some of the weird things we are doing in TypeScript to fake in types for webdriver.

So as part of the task list is to clean up the Protractor codebase. This would mean that export class Webdriver would disappear from the codebase.

So your items:

• executeScript could be accessed from browser.driver.executeScript; however, driver is of type any and executeScript does not have an interface or a return type. Does this prevent you from using this method?

  export interface Driver {
    executeScript: (script: string) => webdriver.promise.Promise<any[]>;
    manage: () => Options;
  }
  
  (browser.driver as Driver).executeScript(<your script>).then(() => ...
  

• export class Webdriver could be written as either a class or an interface. This will eventually be removed from the code base since this was used to fake in types for selenium-webdriver.

[KrauseStefan]

No it does not prevent me

(<any> browser).executeScript(...)

Works in both cases, however it always nice to have the issue fixed at the root instead of using workarounds. 😏

I actually ended up having to add a different workaround to my codebase that hides the above issue.

declare const browser: any;

The above typing is needed since importing 'protractor/globals' before the configuration has been fully loaded throws an exception, because the global variables are not defined before then.

globals.ts:21 throws an exception: TypeError: Cannot read property 'browser' of undefined.

export var browser: Browser = global['protractor']['browser'];

However I need to be able to call execute script from the onPrepare hook.
Hence the typings workaround.

However I see you already made changes related to this, I haven't test it though.

[cnishina]

Workarounds! Win! I agree that fixing the root problem (selenium-webdriver DefinitelyTyped) will solve some of TypeScript issues.

I'll come back to comment on this issue on 'protractor/globals'. I hope to put to rest some of these issues with missing tests.

[cnishina]

Related issue to clean up typings: #3500

[cnishina]

Related issue to not having manage on browser: #3477

[cnishina]

Will need to be resolved when requiring selenium-webdriver ambient typings with protractor typings: #3423

[cnishina]

DefinitelyTyped selenium-webdriver typings PR DefinitelyTyped/DefinitelyTyped#10852.

[cnishina]

To keep track of progress:

• chore(types): webdriver typings for locators #3507 locators with webdriver ambient types
• chore(types): webdriver typings for elements and browser #3513 elements with webdriver ambient types

Also, we should think about how we are importing promise from selenium-webdriver. Currently we are using import {promise} from 'selenium-webdriver; and we are using promise.Promise<T>. Maybe we could do one of the following:

• bring in the namespace and rename Promise to differentiate from es6 Promises: import {Promise as WebDriverPromise} from 'selenium-webdriver/promise';
• change the namespace: import {promise as webdriverpromise} from 'selenium-webdriver';

Option 1 does not take into account for using promise.all. Option 2 might work better with webdriverpromise.all. @mgiambalvo What are your thoughts on this?