NEWS.md

In selenider: Concise, Lazy and Reliable Wrapper for 'chromote' and 'selenium'

selenider 0.4.1

• New scroll_to() and scroll_by() functions allow you to scroll the page vertically and horizontally, without needing a target element.
• A new advanced usage vignette (vignette("advanced-usage", package = "selenider")) has been added.
• A message is now printed when a session is created automatically, to avoid confusion.

selenider 0.4.0

• find_each_element() and find_all_elements() are new functions that can be used to find elements using an element collection. They are designed to replace elem_flatmap(), which is now deprecated and defunct.
• element_list() is now deprecated in favour of as.list.selenider_elements().
• print_lazy() is now deprecated, as it offers little benefit and is complex to maintain.
• ChromoteSession$check_active() is used to make sure that the session is still active before performing an action.
• The timeout argument to open_url(), back(), forward(), and reload()/refresh() allows you to specify how long to wait for a page to load. They default to 60 seconds.

selenider 0.3.0

• Moved all session-specific options in selenider_session() to an option object (either chromote_options() or selenium_options()), which can be passed to the new options argument of selenider_session(). This means that a few arguments to selenider_session() have been deprecated and moved into option objects. Old code should be changed as follows:

• selenider_session(view = TRUE) should be changed to: selenider_session(options = chromote_options(view = TRUE))

• selenider_session(selenium_manager = FALSE) should be changed to: selenider_session( options = selenium_options(server_options = wdman_server_options()) )
• selenider_session(quiet = FALSE) should be changed to: selenider_session(options = selenium_options( server_options = selenium_server_options(verbose = TRUE)) ))

Additionally, create_chromote_session(), create_selenium_server(), and create_selenium_client() are now deprecated. This is because you now have access to all the options of these functions in the options argument of selenider_session().

• Improved reliability of functions when they use chromote, with help of code from the puppeteer project. Most notably:

• elem_click() and friends now work if part of the element is not visible.

• elem_value() and elem_set_value() now work on a wider variety of elements, including <select> elements.

• elem_focus() is a new function that allows you to focus an element.

• selenider_session() now uses the withr.hook_source option to ensure that withr works inside source().

selenider 0.2.0

New features

• elem_select() is a new function for interacting with <select>/<option> elements, allowing you to easily select by value, text and index.
• New current_url() returns the URL of the current page.

Major changes

• Previously, selenider used RSelenium as a Selenium backend. However, this package did not work with the latest version of Selenium, or the latest version of Google Chrome. It now uses selenium, which is compatible with both. This should make selenider more reliable, and more likely to work out of the box when using Selenium.
• Printing HTML elements now prints the actual HTML contained by the element. Previously, it printed the element in "lazy" form, describing how the element was to be obtained. While this new change makes viewing elements much easier, it also means that to print an element, it needs to exist in the DOM. Use print_lazy() to use the previous behaviour when printing.

Minor changes and bug fixes

• take_screenshot() with file = NULL now views the screenshot correctly.
• elem_set_value() now correctly invisibly returns its first argument x, allowing it to be used in a pipeline.
• find_element() and find_elements() no longer accept the link_text argument, as this was not working with chromote. Use elem_find() or elem_filter() instead.
• elem_get_value() now uses the JavaScript value property of an element, not the "value" attribute, meaning that it works in more cases.

selenider 0.1.2

• Responded to CRAN review.

selenider 0.1.1

• Fixed issue with empty vignette.

selenider 0.1.0

• Initial CRAN submission.

selenider documentation built on April 3, 2025, 5:51 p.m.