The path to the driver executable must be set by the webdriver.gecko.driver system property;

Question

I am using Selenium 3.3.1 and I'm testing the code below.

After running the following error is displayed:

Exception in thread "main" java.lang.IllegalStateException: The path to the driver executable must be set by the webdriver.gecko.driver system property; for more information, see https://github.com/mozilla/geckodriver. The latest version can be downloaded from https://github.com/mozilla/geckodriver/releases at com.google.common.base.Preconditions.checkState(Preconditions.java:738) at org.openqa.selenium.remote.service.DriverService.findExecutable(DriverService.java:111) at org.openqa.selenium.firefox.GeckoDriverService.access$100(GeckoDriverService.java:38) at org.openqa.selenium.firefox.GeckoDriverService$Builder.findDefaultExecutable(GeckoDriverService.java:112) at org.openqa.selenium.remote.service.DriverService$Builder.build(DriverService.java:302) at org.openqa.selenium.firefox.FirefoxDriver.toExecutor(FirefoxDriver.java:233) at org.openqa.selenium.firefox.FirefoxDriver.(FirefoxDriver.java:125) at org.openqa.selenium.firefox.FirefoxDriver.(FirefoxDriver.java:121) at Selenium_login.(Selenium_login.java:13) at Selenium_login.main(Selenium_login.java:70) /home/ali/.cache/netbeans/dev/executor-snippets/run.xml:53: Java returned: 1 BUILD FAILED (total time: 0 seconds)

Java code:

import java.io.*;
import org.apache.commons.io.FileUtils;
import org.openqa.selenium.By;
import org.openqa.selenium.OutputType;
import org.openqa.selenium.TakesScreenshot;
import org.openqa.selenium.WebDriver;
import org.openqa.selenium.WebElement;
import org.openqa.selenium.firefox.FirefoxDriver;

public class Selenium_login {

    public WebDriver driver = new FirefoxDriver();

    /**
     * Open the test website.
     */
    public void openTestSite() {
        driver.navigate().to("http://testing-ground.scraping.pro/login");
    }

    /**
     * 
     * @param username
     * @param Password
     * 
     *            Logins into the website, by entering provided username and
     *            password
     */
    public void login(String username, String Password) {

        WebElement userName_editbox = driver.findElement(By.id("usr"));
        WebElement password_editbox = driver.findElement(By.id("pwd"));
        WebElement submit_button = driver.findElement(By.xpath("//input[@value='Login']"));

        userName_editbox.sendKeys(username);
        password_editbox.sendKeys(Password);
        submit_button.click();

    }

    /**
     * grabs the status text and saves that into status.txt file
     * 
     * @throws IOException
     */
    public void getText() throws IOException {
        String text = driver.findElement(By.xpath("//div[@id='case_login']/h3")).getText();
        Writer writer = new BufferedWriter(new OutputStreamWriter(new FileOutputStream("status.txt"), "utf-8"));
        writer.write(text);
        writer.close();

    }

    /**
     * Saves the screenshot
     * 
     * @throws IOException
     */
    public void saveScreenshot() throws IOException {
        File scrFile = ((TakesScreenshot) driver).getScreenshotAs(OutputType.FILE);
        FileUtils.copyFile(scrFile, new File("screenshot.png"));
    }

    public void closeBrowser() {
        driver.close();
    }

    public static void main(String[] args) throws IOException {
        Selenium_login webSrcaper = new Selenium_login();
        webSrcaper.openTestSite();
        webSrcaper.login("admin", "12345");
        webSrcaper.getText();
        webSrcaper.saveScreenshot();
        webSrcaper.closeBrowser();
    }
}

Duplicate of [Selenium using Java - The path to the driver executable must be set by the webdriver.gecko.driver system property](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/38676719/selenium-using-java-the-path-to-the-driver-executable-must-be-set-by-the-webdr) — cachius, May 21 '22 at 21:22

score 10 · Accepted Answer · edited Jun 15 '17 at 16:41

10

You need to use geckodriver to interact with Firefox since Selenium 3.0. Download geckodriver from github depending upon your OS and extract geckodriver.exe into a folder.

Add the following line before initializing WebDriver:

System.setProperty("webdriver.gecko.driver","c:/your/path/to/geckodriver.exe");
WebDriver driver = new FirefoxDriver();
...

edited Jun 15 '17 at 16:41

AnthonyW

1,910
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answered Apr 14 '17 at 21:03

Kushal Bhalaik

3,349
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score 3 · Answer 2 · answered Nov 08 '17 at 12:07

The driver constructor in selenium for example

WebDriver driver = new FirefoxDriver();

searches for the driver executable, in this case firefox driver searches for gecko driver executable. in case the service is unable to find the executable the exception is thrown

this is where the exception comes from (note the check state method)

 /**
   *
   * @param exeName Name of the executable file to look for in PATH
   * @param exeProperty Name of a system property that specifies the path to the executable file
   * @param exeDocs The link to the driver documentation page
   * @param exeDownload The link to the driver download page
   *
   * @return The driver executable as a {@link File} object
   * @throws IllegalStateException If the executable not found or cannot be executed
   */
  protected static File findExecutable(
      String exeName,
      String exeProperty,
      String exeDocs,
      String exeDownload) {
    String defaultPath = new ExecutableFinder().find(exeName);
    String exePath = System.getProperty(exeProperty, defaultPath);
    checkState(exePath != null,
        "The path to the driver executable must be set by the %s system property;"
            + " for more information, see %s. "
            + "The latest version can be downloaded from %s",
            exeProperty, exeDocs, exeDownload);

    File exe = new File(exePath);
    checkExecutable(exe);
    return exe;
  }

Following is the check state method which throws the exception

  /**
   * Ensures the truth of an expression involving the state of the calling instance, but not
   * involving any parameters to the calling method.
   *
   * <p>See {@link #checkState(boolean, String, Object...)} for details.
   */
  public static void checkState(
      boolean b,
      @Nullable String errorMessageTemplate,
      @Nullable Object p1,
      @Nullable Object p2,
      @Nullable Object p3) {
    if (!b) {
      throw new IllegalStateException(format(errorMessageTemplate, p1, p2, p3));
    }
  }

SOLUTION: set the system property before creating driver object as follows

System.setProperty("webdriver.gecko.driver", "./libs/geckodriver.exe");
WebDriver driver = new FirefoxDriver();

following is the code snippet (for firefox and chrome) where the driver service searches for the driver executable:

FireFox:

@Override
 protected File findDefaultExecutable() {
      return findExecutable(
        "geckodriver", GECKO_DRIVER_EXE_PROPERTY,
        "https://github.com/mozilla/geckodriver",
        "https://github.com/mozilla/geckodriver/releases");
    }

Chrome:

   @Override
    protected File findDefaultExecutable() {
      return findExecutable("chromedriver", CHROME_DRIVER_EXE_PROPERTY,
          "https://github.com/SeleniumHQ/selenium/wiki/ChromeDriver",
          "http://chromedriver.storage.googleapis.com/index.html");
    }

where GECKO_DRIVER_EXE_PROPERTY = "webdriver.gecko.driver" and CHROME_DRIVER_EXE_PROPERTY = "webdriver.chrome.driver"

similar is the case for other browsers, following is the snapshot of the list of the available browser implementation

The path to the driver executable must be set by the webdriver.gecko.driver system property;

2 Answers2