launch selenium from python on ubuntu

Question

I have the following script

from selenium import webdriver

browser = webdriver.Firefox()
browser.get(\'http://localhost:8000\')

assert \'Django\' in browse         


        

Answer 1

The last version of Firefox is not working properly with selenium. Try with 46 or 45.

You can download here: ftp.mozilla.org/pub/firefox/releases

or sudo apt-get install firefox=45.0.2+build1-0ubuntu1

You can also do this graphically as shown here http://www.howtogeek.com/117929/how-to-downgrade-packages-on-ubuntu/

Answer 2

I struggled with this problem as well, and I was unhappy with having to use older versions of Firefox. Here's my solution that uses the latest version of Firefox. It however involves several steps

Step 1. Download v0.9.0 Marionette, the next generation of FirefoxDriver, from this location: https://github.com/mozilla/geckodriver/releases/download/v0.9.0/geckodriver-v0.9.0-linux64.tar.gz

Step 2. Extract the file to a desired folder, and rename it to "wires". In my case I created a folder named "add_to_system_path" under Documents. So the file is in Documents/add_to_system_path/wires (also make sure that the wires file is executable under its properties)

Step 3. Create a file named ".pam_environment" under your home folder, and then adding this line on it and save

PATH DEFAULT=${PATH}:/absolute/path/to/the/folder/where/wires/is/saved

What this does is it tells ubuntu to add the enumerated dir in .pam_environment to your system path

Step 4. Save the file, log out of your user session, and log back in. This is necessary to do so that the files in the newly added system path is recognized by ubuntu

Step 5. Use the code below to instantiate the browser instance:

`
from selenium import webdriver
from selenium.webdriver.common.desired_capabilities import DesiredCapabilities

capabilities = DesiredCapabilities.FIREFOX
capabilities["marionette"] = True
browser = webdriver.Firefox(capabilities=capabilities)
browser.get('http://your-target-url')`

Firefox should now be able to instantiate as usual.