There are three kinds of lazy.

Let’s make sure we’re in the last category.

The Selenium library is a workhorse for automating your web browser. I use it to automate data entry and integration testing, but you could do much more with it as long as the task involves your browser. Scrape the DOM? Yes. Click buttons? Yes. Fill out forms? Yes. Handle alerts? Yes. Switch windows? Yes. Want more? Go read the docs. We’re just going to scrape the surface.

1. From the Windows terminal

   $ pip install selenium Collecting selenium Downloading https://files.pythonhosted.org/packages/80/d6/4294f0b4bce4de0abf13e17190289f9d0613b0a44e5dd6a7f5ca98459853/selenium-3.141.0-py2.py3-none-any.whl (904kB) 100% |████████████████████████████████| 911kB 2.2MB/s Collecting urllib3 (from selenium) Downloading https://files.pythonhosted.org/packages/62/00/ee1d7de624db8ba7090d1226aebefab96a2c71cd5cfa7629d6ad3f61b79e/urllib3-1.24.1-py2.py3-none-any.whl (118kB) 100% |████████████████████████████████| 122kB 344kB/s Installing collected packages: urllib3, selenium Successfully installed selenium-3.141.0 urllib3-1.24.1

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   $ pip install selenium Collecting selenium   Downloading https://files.pythonhosted.org/packages/80/d6/4294f0b4bce4de0abf13e17190289f9d0613b0a44e5dd6a7f5ca98459853/selenium-3.141.0-py2.py3-none-any.whl (904kB)     100% |████████████████████████████████| 911kB 2.2MB/s Collecting urllib3 (from selenium)   Downloading https://files.pythonhosted.org/packages/62/00/ee1d7de624db8ba7090d1226aebefab96a2c71cd5cfa7629d6ad3f61b79e/urllib3-1.24.1-py2.py3-none-any.whl (118kB)     100% |████████████████████████████████| 122kB 344kB/s Installing collected packages: urllib3, selenium Successfully installed selenium-3.141.0 urllib3-1.24.1

2. Download Chrome Driver

   https://sites.google.com/a/chromium.org/chromedriver/downloads
   Make sure to get the version that matches your chrome version.
   What version of chrome do I have?
   Extract the zip and take note of the destination folder. You’ll need the .exe path in the next step.

3. Open Python and import selenium

   Python

   $ python > from selenium import webdriver # open the browser and go to a page > driver = webdriver.Chrome("C:\\Your\\Path\\Here\\chromedriver_win32\\chromedriver.exe") > driver.get("http://www.caseycodes.com/blog") # get the search box and send it a value > input = driver.find_element_by_xpath("//input[@type='text']") > input.send_keys("essential git") # get the submit button and click it > submit = driver.find_element_by_id("searchsubmit") > submit.click() # get the title of the results and print them > results = driver.find_elements_by_class_name("entry-title") > result0 = results[0].text > print result0

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   $ python > from selenium import webdriver # open the browser and go to a page > driver = webdriver.Chrome("C:\\Your\\Path\\Here\\chromedriver_win32\\chromedriver.exe") > driver.get("http://www.caseycodes.com/blog") # get the search box and send it a value > input = driver.find_element_by_xpath("//input[@type='text']") > input.send_keys("essential git") # get the submit button and click it > submit = driver.find_element_by_id("searchsubmit") > submit.click() # get the title of the results and print them > results = driver.find_elements_by_class_name("entry-title") > result0 = results[0].text > print result0

   
    

4. Selenium + Unittest

   What is the answer to life, the universe and everything?
   
   

   Unittest

   Python

   import unittest import time from selenium import webdriver from selenium.webdriver.common.keys import Keys class TestManager(unittest.TestCase): driver = webdriver.Chrome('C:\Your\Path\Here\chromedriver_win32\chromedriver.exe') def setUp(self): self.driver.get("http://www.Google.com") def tearDown(self): self.driver.close() class TestTheAnswerToLife(TestManager): def runTest(self): # Arrange expected_answer = "42" # Act search_box = TestManager.driver.find_element_by_xpath("//input[@title='Search']") search_box.send_keys("What is the answer to life the universe and everything?") search_box.send_keys(Keys.ENTER) calculator = TestManager.driver.find_element_by_xpath("//h2[text()='Calculator Result']/following-sibling::div[1]") all_txt = calculator.text lines = all_txt.split('\n') Google_said = lines[1] time.sleep(10) # Assert self.assertEqual(expected_answer, Google_said) if __name__ == '__main__': unittest.main()

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   import unittest import time from selenium import webdriver from selenium.webdriver.common.keys import Keys   class TestManager(unittest.TestCase):     driver = webdriver.Chrome('C:\Your\Path\Here\chromedriver_win32\chromedriver.exe')       def setUp(self):         self.driver.get("http://www.Google.com")          def tearDown(self):         self.driver.close()          class TestTheAnswerToLife(TestManager):     def runTest(self):         # Arrange         expected_answer = "42"                  # Act         search_box = TestManager.driver.find_element_by_xpath("//input[@title='Search']")         search_box.send_keys("What is the answer to life the universe and everything?")         search_box.send_keys(Keys.ENTER)         calculator = TestManager.driver.find_element_by_xpath("//h2[text()='Calculator Result']/following-sibling::div[1]")         all_txt = calculator.text         lines = all_txt.split('\n')         Google_said = lines[1]         time.sleep(10)                  # Assert         self.assertEqual(expected_answer, Google_said)          if __name__ == '__main__':     unittest.main()

5. Run TestDemo.py from the CLI

   Test from command line

   C:\Users\Casey>python TestDemo.py -v runTest (__main__.TestTheAnswerToLife) ... ok ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Ran 1 test in 15.080s OK

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   C:\Users\Casey>python TestDemo.py -v   runTest (__main__.TestTheAnswerToLife) ... ok   ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Ran 1 test in 15.080s   OK