Selenium WebDriver Introduction

What is WebDriver?

WebDriver is Selenium's core API for automating web browsers directly, communicating with each browser through its own dedicated driver executable (e.g., ChromeDriver for Chrome).

Basic Example

WebDriver driver = new ChromeDriver();
driver.get("https://example.com");
driver.findElement(By.id("search")).sendKeys("Selenium");
driver.quit();

Why WebDriver Replaced RC

WebDriver talks to the browser natively rather than through JavaScript injection and a separate server, making it faster, more stable, and better able to handle modern browser security models.