WebDriver aims to allow other standards - to provide extensions to support new functionality, - and to allow conformance tests that cannot be implemented - entirely in ECMAScript - to be written in a vendor-neutral way. +
WebDriver provides a mechanism for others to define extensions to the protocol + for the purposes of automating functionality that cannot be implemented entirely + in ECMAScript. This allows other + web standards to support the automation of new platform features. It also + allows vendors to expose functionality that is specific to their browser.
The protocol is designed to allow extension to meet vendor-specific needs. - Commands that are specific to a user agent +
Using the terminology defined in this section, others may define additional + commands that seamlessly integrate with the standard protocol. This allows + vendors to expose functionality that is specific to their user agent, and it + also allows other web standards to define commands for automating new platform + features. + +
Commands defined in this way are called extension commands and behave no differently than other commands; each has a dedicated HTTP endpoint and a set of remote end steps.
Each extension command has an associated - extension command name + extension command URI Template that is a URI Template string, and which should bear some resemblance to what the command performs. - The name is used to form an extension command’s - URI Template. - -
The extension command’s extension command URI Template
- is a URI Template composed of the extension command prefix,
- followed by "/",
- and the extension command’s name.
- The extension command URI Template,
+ This value,
along with the HTTP method and extension command,
is added to the table of endpoints
and thus follows the same rules for request routing
as that of other built-in commands.
+
In order to avoid potential resource conflicts with other implementations, + vendor-specific extension command URI Templates must begin with one + or more path segments which uniquely identifies the vendor and UA. + It is suggested that vendors use their vendor prefixes + without additional characters as outlined in [[CSS21]], + notably in section 4.1.2.2 on vendor keywords, + as the name for this path element, + and include a vendor-chosen UA identifier. +