webdrivermanager

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 and then extract it and place it by copying or symlinking it to the location where Selenium or other tools should be able to find it then.

Installation

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

pip install webdrivermanager

Dependencies

This module is dependent on the following additional packages:

• requests
• tqdm
• BeautifulSoup4
• appdirs

Classes

The following classes are available:

• ChromeDriverManager for downloading and installing chromedriver (for Google Chrome).
• GeckoDriverManager for downloading and installing geckodriver (for Mozilla Firefox).
• EdgeDriverManager for downloading and installing edgedriver (for Microsoft Edge).
• EdgeChromiumDriverManager for downloading and installing Edge Chromium based webdrivers
• IeDriverManager for downloading and installing Internet Explorer based webdrivers

Status

Currently being developed/tested using Python 2.7.15 and 3.7 on macOS, Windows & Linux

Example module usage

Example:

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

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

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

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

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

Command line options

usage: webdrivermanager [-h] [--downloadpath F] [--linkpath F] [--os OSNAME]

browser [browser ...]

Tool for downloading and installing WebDriver binaries.

positional arguments:

browser Browser to download the corresponding WebDriver

binary. Valid values are: chrome, firefox, gecko, mozilla, edge. Optionally specify a version number of the WebDriver binary as follows: 'browser:version' e.g. 'chrome:2.39'. If no version number is specified, the latest available version of the WebDriver binary will be downloaded.

optional arguments:

-h, --help	show this help message and exit
--downloadpath F, -d F
	Where to download the webdriver binaries
--linkpath F, -l F
	Where to link the webdriver binary to. Set to "AUTO" if you need some intelligence to decice where to place the final webdriver binary
--linkpath F, -l F
	Where to link the webdriver binary to. Set to "AUTO" if you need some intelligense to decide where to place the final webdriver binary. If set to "SKIP", no link/copy done
--os OSNAME, -o OSNAME
	Overrides os detection with given os name

Do note that --downloadpath/-d flag location is used for storing the whole downloaded and then --linkpath/-l path location is where the final binary is either symlinled or copied to. Linkpath should be the directory you either already have in PATH or you should place there since tools using these webdrivers usually locate the appropriate webdriver binary from PATH environment variable.

If linkpath flag is set to AUTO, tool will iterate over your current PATH environment variable and tries to find the first writeable directory within it and place the copy or symlink into it. If linkpath is set to SKIP, only download is done, linking/copying is skipped.

License

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

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