Selenium pdf automatic download not working

Question

I am new to selenium and I am writing a scraper to download pdf files automatically from a given site.

Below is my code:

from selenium import webdriver

fp = webdriver.FirefoxProfile()

fp.set_preference("browser.download.folderList",2);
fp.set_preference("browser.download.manager.showWhenStarting",False)
fp.set_preference("browser.download.dir", "/home/jill/Downloads/Dinamalar")
fp.set_preference("browser.helperApps.neverAsk.saveToDisk", "application/pdf")

browser = webdriver.Firefox(firefox_profile=fp)
browser.get("http://epaper.dinamalar.com/PUBLICATIONS/DM/MADHURAI/2015/05/26/PagePrint//26_05_2015_001_b2b69fda315301809dda359a6d3d9689.pdf");
webobj = browser.find_element_by_id("download").click();

I followed the steps mentioned in Selenium documentation and in the this link. I am not sure why download dialog box is getting shown every time.

Is there anyway to fix it else can there be a way to give "application/all" so that all the files can be downloaded (work-around)?

Answer 1

Disable the built-in pdfjs plugin and navigate to the URL - the PDF file would be downloaded automatically, the code:

from selenium import webdriver

fp = webdriver.FirefoxProfile()

fp.set_preference("browser.download.folderList", 2)
fp.set_preference("browser.download.manager.showWhenStarting",False)
fp.set_preference("browser.download.dir", "/home/jill/Downloads/Dinamalar")
fp.set_preference("browser.helperApps.neverAsk.saveToDisk", "application/pdf,application/x-pdf")

fp.set_preference("pdfjs.disabled", "true")  # < KEY PART HERE

browser = webdriver.Firefox(firefox_profile=fp)
browser.get("http://epaper.dinamalar.com/PUBLICATIONS/DM/MADHURAI/2015/05/26/PagePrint//26_05_2015_001_b2b69fda315301809dda359a6d3d9689.pdf");

---

Update (the complete code that worked for me):

from selenium import webdriver

mime_types = "application/pdf,application/vnd.adobe.xfdf,application/vnd.fdf,application/vnd.adobe.xdp+xml"

fp = webdriver.FirefoxProfile()
fp.set_preference("browser.download.folderList", 2)
fp.set_preference("browser.download.manager.showWhenStarting", False)
fp.set_preference("browser.download.dir", "/home/aafanasiev/Downloads")
fp.set_preference("browser.helperApps.neverAsk.saveToDisk", mime_types)
fp.set_preference("plugin.disable_full_page_plugin_for_types", mime_types)
fp.set_preference("pdfjs.disabled", True)

browser = webdriver.Firefox(firefox_profile=fp)
browser.get("http://epaper.dinamalar.com/")

webobj_get_link = browser.find_element_by_id("liSavePdf")
webobj_get_object = webobj_get_link.find_element_by_tag_name("a")
webobj_get_object.click()