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

Question

I installed protractor following this tutorial and 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

I was facing this error too and by the time I read the tutorial, it did not cover how to install protractor and the webdriver as local dependencies to your project (which are located in ./node_modules).

If this is what you prefer (probably because you might want to use grunt-protractor-runner and run your test later in a continuous build manner as I neede) instead of installing it globally, this solution worked for me:

1. Install protractor:

npm install protractor --save-dev

2. Install selenium and the webdrivers with the webdriver-manager by running:

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

After calling this command have a look at ./node_modules/protractor and it subfolders to verify it. A folder called selenium with the chromedriver in should be available in it.

Note that as protractor was not installed as "global", calling it from the command line will result in a "commnad not found" error. You can run it instead with this command: ./node_modules/protractor/bin/protractor

Additionaly, 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" }

Hope this helps you further...