Problems with the RSelenium driver?

Question

When I try to run RSelenium examples to try to do some webscraping, I get the following error message when I try to open the server ... I'm not sure what the problem is ...

library(RSelenium) startServer() # use default server initialisation values remDr <- remoteDriver$new() # send request to server to initialise session remDr$open() [1] "Connecting to remote server" $message [1] "GET /session/\nBuild info: version: '2.42.0', revision: '5e82430', time: '2014-05-22 20:18:07'\nSystem info: host: 'xxxxx-PC', ip: 'xx.xxx.xx.xx', os.name: 'Windows 8.1', os.arch: 'amd64', os.version: '6.3', java.version: '1.7.0_60'\nDriver info: driver.version: unknown" $localizedMessage [1] "GET /session/\nBuild info: version: '2.42.0', revision: '5e82430', time: '2014-05-22 20:18:07'\nSystem info: host: 'xxxx-PC', ip: 'xx.xxx.xx.xx', os.name: 'Windows 8.1', os.arch: 'amd64', os.version: '6.3', java.version: '1.7.0_60'\nDriver info: driver.version: unknown" $suppressed list() $cause NULL $systemInformation [1] "System info: host: 'xxxxx-PC', ip: 'xx.xx.xx.xx', os.name: 'Windows 8.1', os.arch: 'amd64', os.version: '6.3', java.version: '1.7.0_60'" $supportUrl NULL $class [1] "org.openqa.selenium.UnsupportedCommandException" $additionalInformation [1] "\nDriver info: driver.version: unknown" $hCode [1] 142976762 

Then there is information about stackTrace, all of which are NULL

Any ideas on how to solve this problem?

Also, when I try to start the demonstration, I get the following problem ... (but I think because RSelenium::startServer() not started first)

 > demo(selExecJSexample) demo(selExecJSexample) ---- ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Type <Return> to start : > # see http://stackoverflow.com/questions/22121006/how-to-scrape-this-squawka-page/22127054#22127054 > # RSelenium::startServer() # if needed > require(RSelenium) > remDr <- remoteDriver() > remDr$open() [1] "Connecting to remote server" Error in function (type, msg, asError = TRUE) : couldn't connect to host 

Answer 1

This was due to the fact that the release cycle of selenium was somewhat out of sync with the release cycle of firefox. http://selenium-release.storage.googleapis.com/index.html now contains an updated Selenium server (currently version 2.43.0). Running RSelenium::checkForServer with update = TRUE will update the Selenium server locally, and the latest firefox should work:

 > library(RSelenium) > checkForServer(update = TRUE) [1] "DOWNLOADING STANDALONE SELENIUM SERVER. THIS MAY TAKE SEVERAL MINUTES" trying URL 'http://selenium-release.storage.googleapis.com/2.43/selenium-server-standalone-2.43.0.jar' Content type 'application/x-java-archive' length 34932130 bytes (33.3 Mb) opened URL downloaded 33.3 Mb > remDr <- remoteDriver() > startServer() > remDr$open() [1] "Connecting to remote server" $platform [1] "WINDOWS" $acceptSslCerts [1] TRUE $javascriptEnabled [1] TRUE $browserName [1] "firefox" $rotatable [1] FALSE $locationContextEnabled [1] TRUE $webdriver.remote.sessionid [1] "a2eee1ff-d9fd-41ce-ac0e-e11ce24cb516" $version [1] "32.0" $cssSelectorsEnabled [1] TRUE $databaseEnabled [1] TRUE $handlesAlerts [1] TRUE $webStorageEnabled [1] TRUE $nativeEvents [1] TRUE $applicationCacheEnabled [1] TRUE $takesScreenshot [1] TRUE $id [1] "a2eee1ff-d9fd-41ce-ac0e-e11ce24cb516" 

Running remDr$getStatus() should show that everything is deprecated:

 > remDr$getStatus() $os $os$arch [1] "amd64" $os$name [1] "Windows 8.1" $os$version [1] "6.3" $java $java$version [1] "1.7.0_67" $build $build$revision [1] "597b76b" $build$time [1] "2014-09-09 20:52:14" $build$version [1] "2.43.0"