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:

• beautifulsoup4
• requests
• tqdm

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.