Using Selenium from the browser

Question

I want to run and control a browser window from a web application, to automate some things (like account creation etc.) on another site.

So my question is, is there a way to do it using selenium directly from the browser, and in such a case how to do it?
I know there is selenium-webdriver for JS, but in common use cases we use it with Node.js.

The WebDriver introduction suggests that this is possible:

It is primarily intended to allow web authors to write tests that automate a user agent from a separate controlling process, but may also be used in such a way as to allow in-browser scripts to control a — possibly separate — browser.

you could either run it on your server and present results, or use some kind of browser plug-in... embedded Java (deprecated, and no longer supported), ActiveX (still around?)... maybe an extension or add-on could do it? Any javascript running in the browser on the client side would be inside the sandbox and not allowed to install/run a webdriver. — browsermator
– browsermator, Commented Mar 17, 2021 at 17:00

Jeni · Accepted Answer · 2021-03-17 18:33:49Z

2

If what you want to do is: write a WebApp in such way that when it is loaded on client browser it does some actions on another website - the answer is "NO" - in order to use Selenium you need a thing called "WebDriver" this is a "program" that needs to be run on the machine where selenium is to be run (and it controls the client browser) - but running external programs from browser is not allowed.

What you can do with selenium - run the "webdriver" on a specific machine, and control/automate actions in a browser on this machine.

answered Mar 17, 2021 at 18:33

Jeni

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