[UDF] AutoIt CDP UDF — A Modern, Playwright‑Style Chrome Automation Library

[seangriffin]

Hi everyone,

After months of development, testing, and refinement, I’m excited to share something new with the AutoIt community:

AutoIt CDP UDF

A modern, high‑performance automation library for controlling Chromium‑based browsers directly through the Chrome DevTools Protocol (CDP) — with a clean, Playwright‑inspired API.

This UDF communicates with the browser directly over WebSockets, with no WebDriver, no Selenium, no ChromeDriver, no Node.js, and no external dependencies.

If you’ve ever used Playwright or Puppeteer, the API will feel instantly familiar — but now it’s native AutoIt.

⭐ Why CDP? Why this UDF?

CDP gives you direct, low‑level control over Chromium. That means:

• No WebDriver overhead

• No Selenium flakiness

• No external processes

• No drivers to match versions

• No Python/Node/npm stack

• No installation required

Just AutoIt + Chrome (CDP).

This UDF aims to bring a modern, fluent, reliable automation experience to AutoIt — something closer to Playwright than to traditional WebDriver UDFs.

🔥 Key Features

• Direct CDP communication (no WebDriver, no Selenium)

• Playwright‑inspired API (locators, assertions, steps, test object)

• Extremely fast (no driver layer, no IPC overhead)

• Extremely lightweight (no external runtimes required)

• Auto‑waiting for elements and conditions (planned)

• Built‑in assertion system (expect())

• Object‑driven, test‑aware scripting

• Event‑driven architecture

• Network request/response interception (planned)

• JavaScript evaluation (planned)

• Automatic browser download via Selenium Manager

• Portable, dependency‑free executables that run on any Windows machine

Works with Chrome, Edge, Brave, Chromium — (currently only Chrome is fully supported)

🧪 Playwright‑Style Test Output

Here’s a real output from the included “Basic Web Page” test:

expandcollapse popup

▶ Test: Basic web page test
  ▶ Step: Verify Basic Web Page navigation
    ▶ Step: Navigate to evil tester test pages
    ▶ Step: Verify the main page
        ✓ Expect: expected [Software Testing Practice Pages, Apps, and Challenges] and got [Software Testing Practice Pages, Apps, and Challenges] (line 29)
        ✓ Expect: expected [Software Testing Practice Pages, Apps, and Challenges] and got [Software Testing Practice Pages, Apps, and Challenges] (line 31)
        ✓ Expect: object [-5136690175131552945.1.1] is hidden (line 32)
        ✓ Expect: expected [False] and got [False] (line 33)
        ✓ Expect: expected [True] and got [True] (line 34)
    ▶ Step: Verify navigation to Pages
        ✓ Expect: expected [Pages] and got [Pages] (line 39)
        ✓ Expect: object [-5136690175131552945.1.2] is visible (line 40)
        ✓ Expect: expected truthy and got [True] (line 41)
        ✓ Expect: expected falsy and got [False] (line 42)
    ▶ Step: Navigate to Pages
    ▶ Step: Verify navigation to Basics
        ✓ Expect: expected [Basics] and got [Basics] (line 50)
    ▶ Step: Navigate to Basic Web Page
  ▶ Step: Verify Basic Web Page
    ▶ Step: Page elements
        ✓ Expect: actual text contains [Elements] (line 63)
        ✓ Expect: expected [Tags:

 Elements Locators

Categories:

 Basics] to contain [Elements] (line 64)
        ✓ Expect: expected [Tags:

 Elements Locators

Categories:

 Basics] to match regex [.*Categor.*] (line 65)
        ✓ Expect: expected [A paragraph of text] and got [A paragraph of text] (line 66)
        ✓ Expect: expected [Another paragraph of text] and got [Another paragraph of text] (line 67)
    ▶ Step: Click Me functionality
        ✓ Expect: expected [You clicked the button!] and got [You clicked the button!] (line 72)
        ✓ Expect: expected defined value and got [defined] (line 73)
        ✓ Expect: expected length [23] and got [23] (line 74)
  ▶ Step: Verify invalid locator
      ✓ Expect: expected Null and got [Null] (line 80)

> BasicWebPageWithStandardBrowser() took n ms.

📦 Included Examples

The repo includes a full suite of example scripts:

• Basic Web Page test

• Headless mode

• Auto‑installed Chrome v119

• Playwright Chromium

• Element attributes

• Multiple elements

• Basic inputs

• Number inputs

These examples demonstrate the API, locators, assertions, and CDP interactions.

📥 Download & GitHub Repository

You can find the full source, examples, documentation, and comparison tables here:

👉 https://github.com/seanhaydongriffin/autoit-cdp-udf

🛠️ Requirements

• AutoIt v3.3.16.0+

• AutoItObject UDF (already included)

• JsonC UDF (already included)

• Chrome with remote debugging enabled

🎉 Final Thoughts

This UDF is still evolving — but it already provides a fast, modern, CDP‑native automation experience that AutoIt has never had before.

If you’re interested in:

• modern browser automation

• Playwright‑style scripting

• CDP exploration

• building a new generation of AutoIt test tools

…then I’d love your feedback and ideas.

Edited yesterday at 12:47 AM by seangriffin
simplify the title

[argumentum]

...
Func _CDP_Browser_FullPath($sFullPath = Default)
    Local Static $sBrowser = "init", $iErr = 10, $iExt = 10
    If $sBrowser = "init" Or $sFullPath = "init" Then
        $iErr = 10
        $iExt = 1
        $sBrowser = @ProgramFilesDir & "\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe"
        If Not FileGetSize($sBrowser) Then $sBrowser = @LocalAppDataDir & "\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe"
        If Not FileGetSize($sBrowser) Then $sBrowser = ""
    EndIf
    If Not IsKeyword($sFullPath) And $sFullPath <> "" And $sFullPath <> "init" Then
        $iErr = 10
        $iExt = 2
        $sBrowser = $sFullPath
    EndIf
    If $iErr = 10 Then $iErr = Int(Not FileGetSize($sBrowser))
    Return SetError($iErr, $iExt, $sBrowser)
EndFunc   ;==>_CDP_Browser_FullPath


#Region --- Browser Class ---

Func _CDP_Browser_Launch($oSelf, $browser = Default, $port = Default, $startupSwitches = Default, $profile = Default, $windowSize = Default)

    If $cdp.config.infoPopups = True Then SplashTextOn("AutoIt CDP", "Preparing browser ...", 420, 120)

    If $browser = Default Then
        $browser = _CDP_Browser_FullPath($browser)
    EndIf
...

Thanks for sharing.

Edited Saturday at 02:30 PM by argumentum
better

[mLipok]

Thanks.

But this means next one to add to my Browser.au3 UDF

Oh boy.