Tor Browser with RSelenium in Linux/Windows

Question

Looking to use RSelenium and Tor using my Linux machine to return the Tor IP (w/Firefox as Tor Browser). This is doable with Python, but having trouble with it in R. Can anybody get this to work? Perhaps you can share your solution in either Windows / Linux.

# library(devtools)
# devtools::install_github("ropensci/RSelenium")
library(RSelenium)

RSelenium::checkForServer()
RSelenium::startServer() 

binaryExtension <- paste0(Sys.getenv('HOME'),"/Desktop/tor-browser_en-US/Browser/firefox")
remDr <- remoteDriver(dir = binaryExtention)

remDr$open()
remDr$navigate("http://myexternalip.com/raw")
remDr$quit()

The error Error in callSuper(...) : object 'binaryExtention' not found is being returned.

For community reference, this Selenium code works in Windows using Python3:

from bs4 import BeautifulSoup
from selenium import webdriver
from selenium.webdriver.firefox.firefox_profile import FirefoxProfile
from selenium.webdriver.firefox.firefox_binary import FirefoxBinary

from os.path import expanduser # Finds user's user name on Windows

# Substring inserted to overcome r requirement in FirefoxBinary 
binary = FirefoxBinary(r"%s\\Desktop\\Tor Browser\\Browser\\firefox.exe"  % (expanduser("~")))
profile = FirefoxProfile(r"%s\\Desktop\\Tor Browser\\Browser\\TorBrowser\\Data\\Browser\\profile.default" % (expanduser("~")))

driver = webdriver.Firefox(profile, binary)
driver.get('http://myexternalip.com/raw')   
html = driver.page_source
soup = BeautifulSoup(html, "lxml") # lxml needed

# driver.close()

# line.strip('\n')
"Current Tor IP: " + soup.text.strip('\n')

# Based in part on
# http://stackoverflow.com/questions/13960326/how-can-i-parse-a-website-using-selenium-and-beautifulsoup-in-python
# http://stackoverflow.com/questions/34316878/python-selenium-binding-with-tor-browser
# http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3367288/insert-variable-values-into-a-string-in-python

Answer 1

Something like the following should work:

browserP <- paste0(Sys.getenv('HOME'),"/Desktop/tor-browser_en-US/Browser/firefox")
jArg <- paste0("-Dwebdriver.firefox.bin='", browserP, "'")
selServ <- RSelenium::startServer(javaargs = jArg)

UPDATE:

This worked for me on windows. Firstly run the beta version:

checkForServer(update = TRUE, beta = TRUE, rename = FALSE)

Next open a version of the tor browser manually.

library(RSelenium)
browserP <- "C:/Users/john/Desktop/Tor Browser/Browser/firefox.exe"
jArg <- paste0("-Dwebdriver.firefox.bin=\"", browserP, "\"")
pLoc <- "C:/Users/john/Desktop/Tor Browser/Browser/TorBrowser/Data/Browser/profile.meek-http-helper/"
jArg <- c(jArg, paste0("-Dwebdriver.firefox.profile=\"", pLoc, "\""))
selServ <- RSelenium::startServer(javaargs = jArg)

remDr <- remoteDriver(extraCapabilities = list(marionette = TRUE))
remDr$open()
remDr$navigate("https://check.torproject.org/")

> remDr$getTitle()
[[1]]
[1] "Congratulations. This browser is configured to use Tor."

Answer 2

This works in MacOS Sierra.

First you need to configure both the Firefox and Tor browser Manual Proxy.

Go to your Preferences>Advanced>Network>Settings

Set SOCKS Host: 127.0.0.1 Port:9150 Check -> on SOCKS v5 in the browser menu bar.

You will also need to have Tor Browser open whilst running the R script in Rstudio ....otherwise you will get a message in the firefox browser "The proxy server is refusing connections"

You will also need to copy the name of your firefox profile in the script profile-name

Open Finder and got to /Users/username/Library/Application Support/Firefox/Profiles/profile-name

My R test script

 require(RSelenium)

    fprof <- getFirefoxProfile("/Users/**username**/Library/Application\ Support/Firefox/Profiles/nfqudbv2.default-1484451212373",useBase=TRUE)

    remDrv <- remoteDriver( browserName = "firefox"
                            , extraCapabilities = fprof)

    remDrv$open()
    remDrv$navigate("https://check.torproject.org/")

This will open an instance of the Firefox browser with the message "Congratulations. This browser is configured to use Tor."

Answer 3

Caveat: I have not tested extensively, but it seems to work.

Relying on some ideas from @Ashley72 but avoiding manual setups and copying (as well as now defunct functions from Rselenium needed for the solution from @jdharrison) and some ideas from https://indranilgayen.wordpress.com/2016/10/24/make-rselenium-work-with-r/ adjust the following profile options (I usually adjust a number of other options, but they do not seem relevant for the question):

fprof <- makeFirefoxProfile(list(network.proxy.socks = "127.0.0.1", # for proxy settings specify the proxy host IP  
network.proxy.socks_port = 9150L, # proxy port. Last character "L" for specifying integer is very important and if not specified it will not have any impact
network.proxy.type = 1L, # 1 for manual and 2 for automatic configuration script. here also "L" is important    
network.proxy.socks_version=5L, #ditto     
network.proxy.socks_remote_dns=TRUE))

Then you start the server as usual:

rD <- rsDriver(port = 4445L, browser = "firefox", version = "latest", geckover = "latest", iedrver = NULL, phantomver = "2.1.1",
               verbose = TRUE, check = TRUE, extraCapabilities = fprof) # works for selenium server: 3.3.1 and geckover: 0.15.0; Firefox: 52
remDr <- rD[["client"]]
remDr <- rD$client
remDr$navigate("https://check.torproject.org/") # should confirm tor is setup
remDr$navigate("http://whatismyip.org/") # should confirm tor is setup

As you see, I have not made changes to the marionette option. I have no idea what the implications might be. Please comment.

EDIT: the Tor Browser has to be up and running, it seems. Otherwise, the browser opened by Rselenium gives an error "proxy server refusing connection."