Angular2 + selenium webdriver: cannot resolve 'child_process

Question

I have done this:

ng new typescript-selenium-example
npm install selenium-webdriver --save

(besides, I copied chromedriverto mine /Application)

update app.component.ts:

import { Component } from '@angular/core';
import { Builder, By, until } from 'selenium-webdriver';

@Component({
  selector: 'app-root',
  templateUrl: './app.component.html',
  styleUrls: ['./app.component.css']
})
export class AppComponent {
  constructor() {
    var driver = new Builder()
    .forBrowser('chrome')
    .build();

    driver.get('http://www.google.com/ncr')
        .then(_ => driver.findElement(By.name('q')).sendKeys('webdriver'))
        .then(_ => driver.findElement(By.name('btnG')).click())
        .then(_ => driver.wait(until.titleIs('webdriver - Google Search'), 1000))
        .then(_ => driver.quit());
    console.log('hi');
  }
  title = 'app works!';
}

receiving erros:

ERROR in ./~/selenium-webdriver/net/portprober.js
Module not found: Error: Can't resolve 'child_process' in '/Users/myname/tmp/typescript-selenium-example/node_modules/sele
nium-webdriver/net'
 @ ./~/selenium-webdriver/net/portprober.js 20:11-35
 @ ./~/selenium-webdriver/chrome.js
 @ ./~/selenium-webdriver/index.js
 @ ./src/app/app.component.ts
 @ ./src/app/index.ts
 @ ./src/main.ts
 @ multi main

ERROR in ./~/selenium-webdriver/firefox/binary.js
Module not found: Error: Can't resolve 'child_process' in '/Users/myname/tmp/typescript-selenium-example/node_modules/sele
nium-webdriver/firefox'
 @ ./~/selenium-webdriver/firefox/binary.js 25:14-38
 @ ./~/selenium-webdriver/firefox/index.js
 @ ./~/selenium-webdriver/index.js
 @ ./src/app/app.component.ts
 @ ./src/app/index.ts
 @ ./src/main.ts
 @ multi main

ERROR in ./~/selenium-webdriver/io/exec.js
Module not found: Error: Can't resolve 'child_process' in '/Users/myname/tmp/typescript-selenium-example/node_modules/sele
nium-webdriver/io'
 @ ./~/selenium-webdriver/io/exec.js 20:21-45
 @ ./~/selenium-webdriver/remote/index.js
 @ ./~/selenium-webdriver/index.js
 @ ./src/app/app.component.ts
 @ ./src/app/index.ts
 @ ./src/main.ts
 @ multi main

Answer 1

This problem also appeared for me when one of my tests had a bad method beforeEach. This function tried to reach the global variable in the function before it was initialized. Maybe this will help?

As the comments note, this can also happen if you have poor imports, for example:

import {describe} from 'selenium-webdriver';

or

import {beforeEach} from "selenium-webdriver/testing";