RSelenium UnknownError - java.lang.IllegalStateException with Google Chrome

I was finally able to get RSelenium to work by piecing together information from a number of different sources. I think it would be helpful to have all of this information in one location, so here is the process that I went through to get RSelenium to work on Windows 7 (64-bit) with Chrome as the browser:

1. Download the 64-bit version of Java. I could not get anything to work with the standard download.
2. Download ChromeDriver.
3. Download the Selenium Standalone Server or run checkForServer() from R.

4. Create a batch file to start the Selenium server. I initially tried to use startServer() from an R script, but it would frequently get stuck and not carry on to the next line in the script. Here is the batch file that I created:

   java -jar C:\path\to\selenium-server-standalone.jar -Dwebdriver.chrome.driver=C:\path\to\chromedriver.exe

   ChromeDriver can be put in the PATH environmental variable, but I decided to add in the path to ChromeDriver to the batch file (which accomplishes the same goal).

5. Run the R script. Here is my final script:

   library(RSelenium)shell.exec(paste0("C:\\path\\to\\yourbatchfile.bat"))Sys.sleep(5)remDr <- remoteDriver(browserName = "chrome")remDr$open(silent = TRUE)remDr$navigate("http://www.google.com")

   The Sys.sleep() call was necessary because I would get an error in the remoteDriver() call if it ran before the Selenium Server had finished starting.

It is worth noting that RSelenium has some annoying differences for OSX. The invisible=T/silent=T arguments will not work when you run the yourcommand.command file and the remDr$open() method, respectively. The invisible=T will actually remind you that it only works on Windows. Not a huge deal (and if someone has a workaround I'd appreciate it).

For posterity's sake here's a slight variation for OSX to replace shell.exec using a .command file instead of a .bat with the same contents as above:

yourcommand.command file contents

java -jar /path/to/selenium-server-standalone.jar -Dwebdriver.chrome.driver=/path/to/chromedriver

R script modification

library(RSelenium)system(paste("open","/path/to/yourcommand.command"))Sys.sleep(5)...