What is the use of DesiredCapabilities in Selenium WebDriver?

Question

What is the use of DesiredCapabilities in Selenium WebDriver?

When we want to use this and how?

Answer with example would be appreciated.

Answer 1

Desired capabilities comes in handy while doing remote or parallel execution using selenium grid. We will be parametrizing the browser details and passing in to selenium server using desired capabilities class.

Another usage is, test automation using Appium as shown below

// Created object of DesiredCapabilities class. 
DesiredCapabilities capabilities = new DesiredCapabilities(); 
// Set android deviceName desired capability. Set your device name. 
capabilities.setCapability("deviceName", "your Device Name"); 
// Set BROWSER_NAME desired capability. 
capabilities.setCapability(CapabilityType.BROWSER_NAME, "Chrome"); 
// Set android VERSION desired capability. Set your mobile device's OS version. 
capabilities.setCapability(CapabilityType.VERSION, "5.1"); 
// Set android platformName desired capability. It's Android in our case here. 
capabilities.setCapability("platformName", "Android");