protractor/selenium “could not find chromedriver at” (on Windows)

Question

I installed protractor but when I use webdriver-manager update it says:

selenium standalone is up to date.

chromedriver is up to date.

thou when I try to run the protractor tests, it says:

C:\Users\****\AppData\Roaming\npm\node_modules\protractor\lib\driverProviders\local.dp.js:42

            throw new Error('Could not find chromedriver at ' +

                  ^

    Error: Could not find chromedriver at C:\Users\****\AppData\Roaming\npm\node_modules\protractor\selenium\chromedriver.exe

        at LocalDriverProvider.addDefaultBinaryLocs_ (C:\Users\****\AppData\Roaming\npm\node_modules\protractor\lib\driverProviders\local.dp.js:42:15)

        at LocalDriverProvider.setupEnv (C:\Users\****\AppData\Roaming\npm\node_modules\protractor\lib\driverProviders\local.dp.js:59:8)

        at Runner.run (C:\Users\****\AppData\Roaming\npm\node_modules\protractor\lib\runner.js:308:31)

        at process.<anonymous> (C:\Users\****\AppData\Roaming\npm\node_modules\protractor\lib\runFromLauncher.js:32:14)

        at process.EventEmitter.emit (events.js:98:17)

        at handleMessage (child_process.js:318:10)

        at Pipe.channel.onread (child_process.js:345:11)

    [launcher] Runner Process Exited With Error Code: 8

I checked the local.dp.js and saw that it tried to load the chromedriver from ..\node_modules\protractor\selenium\chromedriver but there only was an empty zip file called chromedriver_2.9.

So I downloaded the chromedriver manually and copied it to this location, producing a new error:

C:\Users\****\AppData\Roaming\npm\node_modules\protractor\node_modules\selenium-webdriver\lib\webdriver\promise.js:1549

      throw error;

            ^

Error: Server exited with 1

    at Error (<anonymous>)

    at ChildProcess.onServerExit (C:\Users\****\AppData\Roaming\npm\node_modules\protractor\node_modules\selenium-webdriver\remote\index.js:193:11)

    at ChildProcess.g (events.js:180:16)

    at ChildProcess.EventEmitter.emit (events.js:98:17)

    at Process.ChildProcess._handle.onexit (child_process.js:797:12)

[launcher] Runner Process Exited With Error Code: 8

Anyone any ideas?

Answer 1

Step 1: Install protractor using the following command

npm install protractor --save-dev

Step 2: Run the following command to Install selenium and the webdrivers with the webdriver-manager

./node_modules/protractor/bin/webdriver-manager update

Step 3: Alright, once you've calling this command have a look at ./node_modules/protractor and it sub-folders to verify it. There should be a folder called selenium with the chromedriver in it.

Note that we did not install the protractor as "global", calling it from the command line will result in a "command not found" error. Instead, run it with this command: 

./node_modules/protractor/bin/protractor

Also, it might be a good idea to add a script definition to your package.json, so that next time you install all your dependencies from zero, npm setup the webdrivers automaticaly. For that add this to your package.json file: 

 "scripts": {

    "postinstall": "./node_modules/protractor/bin/webdriver-manager update"

  }

If you are interested to learn Selenium on a much deeper level and want to become a professional in the testing domain, enroll in Selenium course online!