`webdriverdownloader`

Python module to facilitate downloading and deploying WebDriver binaries. The classes in this module can be used to automatically search for and download the latest version (or a specific version) of a WebDriver binary (will download to $HOME/webdriver or /usr/local/webdriver if run with sudo), extract the binary from the downloaded archive and create a symlink in either /usr/local/bin (if run with sudo) or $HOME/bin.

Note: For non-root users, the $HOME/bin directory may not be in the search PATH. If you are unable to add this directory your search path, a workaround is to capture the return value from the download() or download_and_install() method (see the docstrings for those methods for more information on the return values) and pass the path to the downloaded webdriver binary as a parameter to the constructor for the Selenium WebDriver instance. See the documentation for the executable_path parameter for the relevant WebDriver class for more information.

Installation

This module is available on the Python Package Index (PyPI) and can be installed as follows:

pip install webdriverdownloader

Dependencies

This module is dependent on the following additional packages:

Classes

The following classes are available:

ChromeDriverDownloader for downloading and installing chromedriver (for Google Chrome).
GeckoDriverDownloader for downloading and installing geckodriver (for Mozilla Firefox).
OperaChromiumDriverDownloader for downloading and installing operadriver (for Chromium based Opera browsers).

Status

Currently being developed/tested using Python 2.7.16 and 3.8.1 on macOS and Windows 10.

Example module usage

Example:

>>> from webdriverdownloader import GeckoDriverDownloader
>>> gdd = GeckoDriverDownloader()
>>> gdd.download_and_install()
1524kb [00:00, 1631.24kb/s]
('/Users/lsaguisag/webdriver/geckodriver-v0.20.1-macos/geckodriver', '/Users/lsaguisag/bin/geckodriver')
>>> gdd.download_and_install("v0.20.0")
1501kb [00:02, 678.92kb/s]
Symlink /Users/lsaguisag/bin/geckodriver already exists and will be overwritten.
('/Users/lsaguisag/webdriver/geckodriver-v0.20.0-macos/geckodriver', '/Users/lsaguisag/bin/geckodriver')
>>> gdd.download_and_install()
Symlink /Users/lsaguisag/bin/geckodriver already exists and will be overwritten.
('/Users/lsaguisag/webdriver/geckodriver-v0.20.1-macos/geckodriver', '/Users/lsaguisag/bin/geckodriver')
>>>

Command line tool

There is a command-line tool that is also available. After installing the package, it can be used as follows (Windows example):

> webdriverdownloader chrome:2.38 firefox opera:v.2.35
Downloading WebDriver for browser: 'chrome'
3300kb [00:00, 11216.38kb/s]
Driver binary downloaded to: C:\Users\lsaguisag\webdriver\chrome\2.38\2.38%2Fchromedriver_win32\chromedriver.exe
Driver copied to: C:\Users\lsaguisag\bin\chromedriver.exe

Downloading WebDriver for browser: 'firefox'
3031kb [00:01, 2253.64kb/s]
Driver binary downloaded to: C:\Users\lsaguisag\webdriver\gecko\v0.20.1\geckodriver-v0.20.1-win64\geckodriver.exe
Driver copied to: C:\Users\lsaguisag\bin\geckodriver.exe

Downloading WebDriver for browser: 'opera'
3548kb [00:02, 1239.02kb/s]
Driver binary downloaded to: C:\Users\lsaguisag\webdriver\operachromium\v.2.35\operadriver_win64\operadriver_win64\operadriver.exe
Driver copied to: C:\Users\lsaguisag\bin\operadriver.exe

WARNING: Path 'C:\Users\lsaguisag\bin' is not in the PATH environment variable.

In the above example, a version was specified for Chrome and Opera while no version was specified for Firefox so the latest version of geckodriver was implicitly downloaded.

TODOs

Test on Linux

License

This is released under an MIT license. See the LICENSE file in this repository for more information.

Important: Consult the license terms of the providers of the WebDriver downloads prior to downloading / using the WebDrivers.

rotaki/webdriverdownloader

webdriverdownloader