python webdriver error when starting Firefox

Question

I recently downloaded selenium and tried to run this script:

 from selenium import webdriver
 driver = webdriver.Firefox()

but I get this error:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<pyshell#3>", line 1, in <module>
    driver = webdriver.Firefox()
  File "C:\Heights\PortableApps\PortablePython2.7.6.1\App\lib\site-packages\selenium-3.0.1-py2.7.egg\selenium\webdriver\firefox\webdriver.py", line 145, in __init__
    keep_alive=True)
  File "C:\Heights\PortableApps\PortablePython2.7.6.1\App\lib\site-packages\selenium-3.0.1-py2.7.egg\selenium\webdriver\remote\webdriver.py", line 92, in __init__
    self.start_session(desired_capabilities, browser_profile)
  File "C:\Heights\PortableApps\PortablePython2.7.6.1\App\lib\site-packages\selenium-3.0.1-py2.7.egg\selenium\webdriver\remote\webdriver.py", line 179, in start_session
    response = self.execute(Command.NEW_SESSION, capabilities)
  File "C:\Heights\PortableApps\PortablePython2.7.6.1\App\lib\site-packages\selenium-3.0.1-py2.7.egg\selenium\webdriver\remote\webdriver.py", line 236, in execute
    self.error_handler.check_response(response)
  File "C:\Heights\PortableApps\PortablePython2.7.6.1\App\lib\site-packages\selenium-3.0.1-py2.7.egg\selenium\webdriver\remote\errorhandler.py", line 192, in check_response
    raise exception_class(message, screen, stacktrace)
WebDriverException: Message: Expected browser binary location, but unable to find binary in default location, no 'firefox_binary' capability provided, and no binary flag set on the command line

Oh by the way this opens my geckodriver.exe before it prints the error

Answer 1

I got around this by manually setting the binary location as per the following answer:

https://stackoverflow.com/a/25715497

Remember to set your binary to the actual location of the firefox binary on your computer

eg:

from selenium.webdriver.firefox.firefox_binary import FirefoxBinary

binary = FirefoxBinary(r'C:\Program Files (x86)\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe')
self.browser = webdriver.Firefox(firefox_binary=binary)

(note: the 'r' before the first quote in the file path string makes python see the string as 'raw' text, and therefore you don't need to escape characters like '\' - you can just put in the path as it actually is)