Question

I am having difficulty with Selenium RC. When trying to run scripts in Python, I see the message “Cannot import name webdriver”.

I’m likely missing something very basic. Let me explain every step I’ve taken (better to be too granular than too vague…):

1. Download and set up Java Development Kit and set Paths. The command ‘Java -version’ yields “1.6.0_26”

2. Download the Selenium RC standalone server.

3. Started the server

4. Downloaded and installed Python 2.6 32-bit version

5. Downloaded the Python bindings from http://selenium.googlecode.com/files/selenium-remote-control-1.0.3.zip. From the zip file, I have copied selenium.py into my Python27\Libs directory.

6. Created a script in Selenium IDE. Exported for Python.

When I try to run the script from IDLE, I see the message “ImportError: cannot import name webdriver”. The script I’m using starts

from selenium import webdriver

I see no definition of a function named ‘webdriver’ in selenium.py. Is this the wrong file? I am quite confused.

Scripts that don’t refer to ‘import webdriver’ work just fine.

Googling is very unhelpful, and most tutorials are either incomplete or assume a Linux environment (I’m using Windows).

Is this an issue with Selenium 1 vs Selenium 2? Do I need Selenium 2 bindings? Are they different to mine?

Any assistance is appreciated.

Answer 1

WebDriver is part of Selenium 2. You are installing the Selenium 1 bindings and then trying to run WebDriver. That won’t work.

Furthermore, WebDriver API eliminates the need for the Server component (WebDriver is different than Selenium-RC). To use WebDriver, All you need are the Python bindings for Selenium 2.

The easiest way to install them is with pip or easy_install

pip install selenium

or

easy_install selenium