Dynamically changing proxy in Firefox with Selenium webdriver

Question

Is there any way to dynamically change the proxy being used by Firefox when using selenium webdriver?

Currently I have proxy support using a proxy profile but is there a way to change the proxy when the browser is alive and running?

My current code:

proxy = Proxy({
    'proxyType': 'MANUAL',
    'httpProxy': proxy_ip,
    'ftpProxy': proxy_ip,
    'sslProxy': proxy_ip,
    'noProxy': '' # set this value as desired
    })
browser = webdriver.Firefox(proxy=proxy)

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

This is a slightly old question. But it is actually possible to change the proxies dynamically thru a "hacky way" I am going to use Selenium JS with Firefox but you can follow thru in the language you want.

Step 1: Visiting "about:config"

driver.get("about:config");

Step 2 : Run script that changes proxy

var setupScript=`var prefs = Components.classes["@mozilla.org/preferences-service;1"]
.getService(Components.interfaces.nsIPrefBranch);

prefs.setIntPref("network.proxy.type", 1);
prefs.setCharPref("network.proxy.http", "${proxyUsed.host}");
prefs.setIntPref("network.proxy.http_port", "${proxyUsed.port}");
prefs.setCharPref("network.proxy.ssl", "${proxyUsed.host}");
prefs.setIntPref("network.proxy.ssl_port", "${proxyUsed.port}");
prefs.setCharPref("network.proxy.ftp", "${proxyUsed.host}");
prefs.setIntPref("network.proxy.ftp_port", "${proxyUsed.port}");
                  `;    

//running script below  
driver.executeScript(setupScript);

//sleep for 1 sec
driver.sleep(1000);

Where use ${abcd} is where you put your variables, in the above example I am using ES6 which handles concatenation as shown, you can use other concatenation methods of your choice , depending on your language.

Step 3: : Visit your site

driver.get("http://whatismyip.com");

Explanation:the above code takes advantage of Firefox's API to change the preferences using JavaScript code.

Answer 2

One possible solution is to close the webdriver instance and create it again after each operation by passing a new configuration in the browser profile

Answer 3

As far as I know there are only two ways to change the proxy setting, one via a profile (which you are using) and the other using the capabilities of a driver when you instantiate it as per here. Sadly neither of these methods do what you want as they both happen before as you create your driver.

I have to ask, why is it you want to change your proxy settings? The only solution I can easily think of is to point firefox to a proxy that you can change at runtime. I am not sure but that might be possible with browsermob-proxy.