Setting Up Selenium with Python and Chrome Driver on Ubuntu

Welcome to our comprehensive guide on setting up Selenium with Python and Chrome Driver on Ubuntu. Selenium is a powerful tool for automating web browsers, and Python makes it easy to write scripts. In this guide, we’ll walk you through each step, from installing the necessary software to running your first automated test. Whether you’re new to programming or just new to Selenium, this guide is designed for beginners. By the end, you’ll have a working setup ready to automate your web tasks. Let’s get started on this exciting journey into web automation!

In this blog post, you will learn to set up a Selenium environment on an Ubuntu system. Also provides you with a few examples of Selenium scripts written in Python.

Prerequisites

You must have Sudo privileged account access to the Ubuntu system.

One of the examples also required a desktop environment to be installed.

Step 1: Installing Google Chrome

Use the below steps to install the latest Google Chrome browser on Ubuntu and Debian systems.

1. First of all, download the latest Google Chrome Debian package on your system.

   wget -nc https://dl.google.com/linux/direct/google-chrome-stable_current_amd64.deb 
   

2. Now, execute the following commands to install Google Chrome from the locally downloaded file.

   sudo apt update 
   sudo apt install -f ./google-chrome-stable_current_amd64.deb 
   

   Press ‘y’ for all the confirmations asked by the installer.

This will complete the Google Chrome on your Ubuntu or Debian system. This will also create an Apt PPA file for further upgrades.

Step 2: Installing Selenium and Webdriver for Python

We will use a virtual environment for running Python scripts. Follow the below steps to create Python virtual environment and install the required python modules.

1. Create a directory to store Python scripts. Then switch to the newly-created directory.

   mkdir tests && cd tests 
   

2. Set up the Python virtual environment and activate it.

   python3 -m venv venv 
   source venv/bin/activate 
   

   Once the environment is activated, You will find the updated prompt as shown below screenshot:

   

3. Now use PIP to install the selenium and webdriver-manager Python modules under the virtual environment.

   pip install selenium webdriver-manager 
   

   

Example 1: Selenium Python Script with Headless Chrome

Your system is ready to run Selenium scripts written in Python. Now, create a sample selenium script in Python that fetches the title of a website.

This script will run headless, So you can run it without an X desktop environment. You can simply SSH to your system and run the below example:

1. Create a Python script and edit it in your favorite text editor:

   nano test.py 
   

2. Copy-paste the following Selenium Python script to the file.

   
   from selenium import webdriver
   from selenium.webdriver.chrome.options import Options
   from selenium.webdriver.chrome.service import Service
   from webdriver_manager.chrome import ChromeDriverManager
   
   options = Options()
   options.add_argument('--headless')
   options.add_argument('--no-sandbox')
   options.add_argument('--disable-dev-shm-usage')
   driver = webdriver.Chrome(service=Service(ChromeDriverManager().install()), options=options)
   
   driver.get("https://python.org")
   print(driver.title)
   driver.close()
   
   

   Press CTRL + O to save content to the file and press CTRL + X to close the editor.

3. Now, run this Python script in a shell.

   python test.py 
   

   You will see the output something like the below:

   

Example 2: Selenium Python Script with Chrome GUI

In order to run this example, the Ubuntu system must have installed a Desktop environment. If the desktop is not installed, use another tutorial to install the Desktop environment on Ubuntu systems.

Now, log in to the desktop interface and try to run the below example.

1. Open a command prompt, then create a new Python script and edit it in your favorite text editor.

   nano test.py 
   

2. Copy-paste the below snippet in the file:

   
   import time
   from selenium import webdriver
   from selenium.webdriver.chrome.options import Options
   from selenium.webdriver.chrome.service import Service
   from selenium.webdriver.common.by import By
   from selenium.webdriver.common.keys import Keys
   from webdriver_manager.chrome import ChromeDriverManager
   
   options = Options()
   # options.add_argument('--headless')
   # options.add_argument('--no-sandbox')
   options.add_argument('--disable-dev-shm-usage')
   driver = webdriver.Chrome(service=Service(ChromeDriverManager().install()), options=options)
   
   driver.get('http://www.google.com')
   search = driver.find_element(by=By.NAME, value="q")
   search.send_keys("Hey, Tecadmin")
   search.send_keys(Keys.RETURN)
   
   time.sleep(5)
   driver.close()
   
   

   Write the changes to file with CTRL + O and close this with keyboard shortcut CTRL + X

3. This is a Selenium script written in Python, that will launch the Google Chrome web browser and search for a defined string. then close the browser.
4. Run the Python script in the terminal:

   python test2.py 
   

   You will see that a Browser window will open and perform the defined tasks in the script. See the below screencast of the run:

Conclusion

In this tutorial, you have learned about the configuration of Selenium for Python on Ubuntu and Debian Linux systems. Also provides you with two Selenium examples. Hope this tutorial helps you to understand to run Selenium with Python.