Refresh a local web page using Python

Question

I'm using Python to gather some information, construct a very simple html page, save it locally and display the page in my browser using webbrowser.open('file:///c:/testfile.html'). I check for new information every minute. If the information changes, I rewrite the local html file and would like to reload the displayed page.

The problem is that webbrowser.open opens a new tab in my browser every time I run it. How do I refresh the page rather than reopen it? I tried new=0, new=1 and new=2, but all do the same thing. Using controller() doesn't work any better.

I suppose I could add something like < META HTTP-EQUIV="refresh" CONTENT="60" > to the < head > section of the html page to trigger a refresh every minute whether or not the content changed, but would prefer finding a better way.

Exact time interval is not important.

Python 2.7.2, chrome 26.0.1410.64 m, Windows 7 64.

Answer 1

If you're going to need a refresh on the same tab, you'll need selenium webdriver. After installing selenium using pip, you can use the following code :

from selenium import webdriver
import time
import urllib
import urllib2
    
x = raw_input("Enter the URL")
refreshrate = raw_input("Enter the number of seconds")
refreshrate = int(refreshrate)
driver = webdriver.Firefox()
driver.get("http://"+x)

while True:
    time.sleep(refreshrate)
    driver.refresh()

This will open the URL and refresh the tab every refreshrate seconds

Answer 2

I use pyautogui module to refresh the browser page. It's one liner:

import pyautogui

pyautogui.hotkey('f5') #Simulates F5 key press = page refresh

Answer 3

Keep it very short, as simple as:

from selenium import webdriver
import time

driver = webdriver.Firefox()

driver.get('URL')
while True:
    time.sleep(20)
    driver.refresh()
driver.quit()