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The Browser Object

If you use the WDIO test runner, you can access the WebDriver instance through the global browser or driver object.

The session is initialized by the test runner. The same goes for ending the session. This is also done by the test runner process.

Besides all commands from the API, the browser object provides some more information you might be interested in during your test run:

Get Desired Capabilities

console.log(browser.sessionId) // outputs: "57b15c6ea81d0edb9e5b372da3d9ce28"
console.log(browser.capabilities)
/**
 * outputs:
   { acceptInsecureCerts: false,
     acceptSslCerts: false,
     applicationCacheEnabled: false,
     browserConnectionEnabled: false,
     browserName: 'chrome',
     chrome:
      { chromedriverVersion: '2.40.565386 (45a059dc425e08165f9a10324bd1380cc13ca363)',
        userDataDir: '/var/folders/ns/8mj2mh0x27b_gsdddy1knnsm0000gn/T/.org.chromium.Chromium.mpJ0yc' },
     cssSelectorsEnabled: true,
     databaseEnabled: false,
     handlesAlerts: true,
     hasTouchScreen: false,
     javascriptEnabled: true,
     locationContextEnabled: true,
     mobileEmulationEnabled: false,
     nativeEvents: true,
     networkConnectionEnabled: false,
     pageLoadStrategy: 'normal',
     platform: 'Mac OS X',
     rotatable: false,
     setWindowRect: true,
     takesHeapSnapshot: true,
     takesScreenshot: true,
     unexpectedAlertBehaviour: '',
     version: '68.0.3440.106',
     webStorageEnabled: true }
 */

Get Config Options

You can always define custom options within your WDIO config:

// wdio.conf.js
exports.config = {
    // ...
    fakeUser: 'maxmustermann',
    fakePassword: 'foobar',
    // ...
}

And access it in your tests:

console.log(browser.config)
/**
 * outputs:
 * {
        port: 4444,
        protocol: 'http',
        waitforTimeout: 10000,
        waitforInterval: 250,
        logLevel: 'debug',
        baseUrl: 'http://localhost',
        connectionRetryTimeout: 90000,
        connectionRetryCount: 3,
        specs: [ 'err.js' ],
        fakeUser: 'maxmustermann', // <-- custom option
        fakePassword: 'foobar', // <-- custom option
        // ...
 */

console.log(browser.config.fakeUser) // outputs: "maxmustermann"

Mobile Flags

If you need to modify your test based on whether or not your session runs on a mobile device, you can access the mobile flags to check.

For example, given this config:

// wdio.conf.js
exports.config = {
    // ...
    capabilities: {
        platformName: 'iOS',
        app: 'net.company.SafariLauncher',
        udid: '123123123123abc',
        deviceName: 'iPhone',
        // ...
    }
    // ...
}

You can access these flags in your test like so:

// Note: `driver` is the equivalent to the `browser` object but semantically more correct
// you can choose which global variable you want to use
console.log(driver.isMobile) // outputs: true
console.log(driver.isIOS) // outputs: true
console.log(driver.isAndroid) // outputs: false

This can be useful if, for example, you want to define selectors in your page objects based on the device type, like this:

// mypageobject.page.js
import Page from './page'

class LoginPage extends Page {
    // ...
    get username() {
        const selectorAndroid = 'new UiSelector().text("Cancel").className("android.widget.Button")'
        const selectorIOS = 'UIATarget.localTarget().frontMostApp().mainWindow().buttons()[0]'
        const selectorType = driver.isAndroid ? 'android' : 'ios'
        const selector = driver.isAndroid ? selectorAndroid : selectorIOS
        return $(`${selectorType}=${selector}`)
    }
    // ...
}

You can also use these flags to run only certain tests for certain device types:

// mytest.e2e.js
describe('my test', () => {
    // ...
    // only run test with Android devices
    if (driver.isAndroid) {
        it('tests something only for Android', () => {
            // ...
        })
    }
    // ...
})