Automatic download of appropriate chromedriver for Selenium in Python

Question

Unfortunately, Chromedriver always is version-specific to the Chrome version you have installed. So when you pack your python code AND a chromedriver via PyInstaller in a deployable .exe-file for Windows, it will not work in most cases as you won't be able to have all chromedriver versions in the .exe-file.

Anyone knows a way on how to download the correct chromedriver from the website automatically?

If not, I'll come up with a code to download the zip-file and unpack it to temp.

Thanks!

Answer 1

Here is the other solution, where webdriver_manager does not support. This script will get the latest chrome driver version downloaded.

import requests
import wget
import zipfile
import os

# get the latest chrome driver version number
url = 'https://chromedriver.storage.googleapis.com/LATEST_RELEASE'
response = requests.get(url)
version_number = response.text

# build the donwload url
download_url = "https://chromedriver.storage.googleapis.com/" + version_number +"/chromedriver_win32.zip"

# download the zip file using the url built above
latest_driver_zip = wget.download(download_url,'chromedriver.zip')

# extract the zip file
with zipfile.ZipFile(latest_driver_zip, 'r') as zip_ref:
    zip_ref.extractall() # you can specify the destination folder path here
# delete the zip file downloaded above
os.remove(latest_driver_zip)

Answer 2

Webdriver Manager will do that for you. refer this link https://pypi.org/project/webdriver-manager/

Answer 3

Here is one more way For Python -

import chromedriver_autoinstaller
from selenium import webdriver

opt = webdriver.ChromeOptions()
opt.add_argument("--start-maximized")

chromedriver_autoinstaller.install()
driver = webdriver.Chrome(options=opt)
driver.get('https://stackoverflow.com/')

here is more info

https://pypi.org/project/chromedriver-autoinstaller/

Answer 4

I have a slightly fancier version

It will detected what chrome version you have, grab the correct driver

def download_chromedriver():
    def get_latestversion(version):
        url = 'https://chromedriver.storage.googleapis.com/LATEST_RELEASE_' + str(version)
        response = requests.get(url)
        version_number = response.text
        return version_number
    def download(download_url, driver_binaryname, target_name):
        # download the zip file using the url built above
        latest_driver_zip = wget.download(download_url, out='./temp/chromedriver.zip')

        # extract the zip file
        with zipfile.ZipFile(latest_driver_zip, 'r') as zip_ref:
            zip_ref.extractall(path = './temp/') # you can specify the destination folder path here
        # delete the zip file downloaded above
        os.remove(latest_driver_zip)
        os.rename(driver_binaryname, target_name)
        os.chmod(target_name, 755)
    if os.name == 'nt':
        replies = os.popen(r'reg query "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Google\Chrome\BLBeacon" /v version').read()
        replies = replies.split('\n')
        for reply in replies:
            if 'version' in reply:
                reply = reply.rstrip()
                reply = reply.lstrip()
                tokens = re.split(r"\s+", reply)
                fullversion = tokens[len(tokens) - 1]
                tokens = fullversion.split('.')
                version = tokens[0]
                break
        target_name = './bin/chromedriver-win-' + version + '.exe'
        found = os.path.exists(target_name)
        if not found:
            version_number = get_latestversion(version)
            # build the donwload url
            download_url = "https://chromedriver.storage.googleapis.com/" + version_number +"/chromedriver_win32.zip"
            download(download_url, './temp/chromedriver.exe', target_name)

    elif os.name == 'posix':
        reply = os.popen(r'chromium --version').read()

        if reply != '':
            reply = reply.rstrip()
            reply = reply.lstrip()
            tokens = re.split(r"\s+", reply)
            fullversion = tokens[1]
            tokens = fullversion.split('.')
            version = tokens[0]
        else:
            reply = os.popen(r'google-chrome --version').read()
            reply = reply.rstrip()
            reply = reply.lstrip()
            tokens = re.split(r"\s+", reply)
            fullversion = tokens[2]
            tokens = fullversion.split('.')
            version = tokens[0]

        target_name = './bin/chromedriver-linux-' + version
        print('new chrome driver at ' + target_name)
        found = os.path.exists(target_name)
        if not found:
            version_number = get_latestversion(version)
            download_url = "https://chromedriver.storage.googleapis.com/" + version_number +"/chromedriver_linux64.zip"
            download(download_url, './temp/chromedriver', target_name) 
 

Answer 5

As of Aug-2021, this is the status :-

chromedriver-autoinstaller

Automatically download and install chromedriver that supports the currently installed version of chrome. This installer supports Linux, MacOS and Windows operating systems.

Installation

pip install chromedriver-autoinstaller

Usage

Just type import chromedriver_autoinstaller in the module you want to use chromedriver.

Example

---

from selenium import webdriver
import chromedriver_autoinstaller


chromedriver_autoinstaller.install()  # Check if the current version of chromedriver exists
                                      # and if it doesn't exist, download it automatically,
                                      # then add chromedriver to path

driver = webdriver.Chrome()
driver.get("http://www.python.org")
assert "Python" in driver.title

Reference link here