Selenium Chrome driver not generating search results in headless mode - python

I was doing some scraping task and came across this issue where, when the browser is made to run in headless mode, it does not produce search results, rather gives a blank body.
This issue is not encountered in every run, but randomly pops ups in between some runs.
Expected:
Actual (image saved by driver.save_screenshot()):
configuration of webdriver:
options = webdriver.ChromeOptions()
options.add_argument('--headless')
options.add_argument('--no-sandbox')
options.add_argument("--disable-extensions")
options.add_argument("--proxy-server='direct://'")
options.add_argument("--proxy-bypass-list=*")
options.add_argument("--start-maximized")
options.add_argument('--disable-gpu')
options.add_argument('--disable-dev-shm-usage')
options.add_argument('--ignore-certificate-errors')
options.add_argument('--allow-running-insecure-content')
options.add_argument("--window-size=1920,1080")
While in headless mode only this issue is being faced.
Methods already tried include:
Implicit wait
time.sleep()
Browser reload
Environment: MacOS 11.5.2
Any help is appreciated

Related

Selenium: Driver ignores custom profile when headless mode is enabled

I have the following code:
options = webdriver.ChromeOptions()
options.add_argument('log-level=3')
options.add_experimental_option('excludeSwitches', ['enable-logging'])
options.add_argument("--user-data-dir=C:\\users\\eirik\\AppData\\Local\\Google\\Chrome\\User Data")
options.add_argument("--profile-directory=Bot")
options.add_experimental_option("detach", True)
driver = webdriver.Chrome(executable_path="C:\\Program Files\\chromedriver.exe", options=options)
This code functions properly, however, If I were to add options.add_argument("--headless") the browser will work as expected with the exception of the custom profile being completely ignored. So browser presets, such as logins and extensions are missing.
I'd be glad for any help!
Kind Regards
-Eirik

context_click() not working in headless chrome - Selenium

I am trying to right-click on a webpage using selenium context_click(). When I am doing this in normal mode, the context_click() is working, but in headless mode, it is not working. Doing this on chromedriver.
Here is the headless mode configuration,
options = webdriver.ChromeOptions()
options.add_argument('--headless')
options.add_argument('--no-sandbox')
options.add_argument('--disable-dev-shm-usage')
options.add_argument("--start-maximized")
options.add_argument("--window-size=1088,1088")
options.add_argument('--ignore-certificate-errors')
driver = webdriver.Chrome('chromedriver',options=options)
And this is the code I am using to do context_click():
from selenium.webdriver import ActionChains
# action chain object creation
action = ActionChains(driver)
action.move_by_offset(200, 200)
# right click operation and then perform
action.context_click().perform()
#get screenshot
driver.get_screenshot_as_file("/content/screenshot3.png")

chrome in headless mode with selenium

How to open chrome in headless mode with selenium? I tried
chromeOptions = Options()
chromeOptions.add_argument("headless")
self.driver = webdriver.Chrome(ChromeDriverManager().install(), options=chromeOptions)
but this just returns an error
Error with Permissions-Policy header: Unrecognized feature: 'interest-cohort'.", source: (0)
This is wrong way
chromeOptions.add_argument("headless")
try this
chromeOptions.add_argument("--headless")
I am using these config in my project, so thought it would be helpful to you.
options = webdriver.ChromeOptions()
options.add_argument("--disable-infobars")
options.add_argument("--start-maximized")
options.add_argument("--disable-extensions")
options.add_argument('--window-size=1920,1080')
options.add_argument("--headless")
driver = webdriver.Chrome(executable_path = driver_path, options = options)
Note that driver_path is basically the chromedriver.exe, if ChromeDriverManager().install() works for you better stick with that.
headless is not a correct command format. Chrome command line switch always starts with -- that means it should be --headless
--headless: Run in headless mode, i.e., without a UI or display server dependencies.
Code:
chromeOptions = Options()
chromeOptions.add_argument("--headless")
self.driver = webdriver.Chrome(ChromeDriverManager().install(), options=chromeOptions)
Please refer the below page for all command line switches and their details,
Reference: https://peter.sh/experiments/chromium-command-line-switches/
i'm using undetected_chrome, i used the below code to do mine and it worked perfectly
options = webdriver.ChromeOptions()
options.add_argument("--disable-infobars")
options.add_argument("--start-maximized")
options.add_argument("--disable-extensions")
options.add_argument('--window-size=1920,1080')
options.add_argument("--headless")
driver = uc.Chrome(use_subprocess=True, options=options)

driver.get() stopped working in Headless -mode (Chrome)

recently a scraper I made stopped working in headless mode. I've tried with both firefox and Chrome. Notable things are that I am using seleniumwire to access API requests, and that I am using ChromeDriverManager to get the driver. Current version for Chrome/93.0.4577.63.
I've tried modifying the User-Agent manually as can be seen in the below code, in case the website added some checks blocking HeadlessChrome/93.0.4577.63 which is the original User-Agent. This did not help.
When running the script in regular mode, it works. When running in headless mode, the below code would output [] meaning that driver.get(url) does not return any requests. I run this code daily and it stopped working on 8.9.2021 I think, during the day.
from selenium.webdriver.chrome.options import Options as chromeOptions
from seleniumwire import webdriver
from webdriver_manager.chrome import ChromeDriverManager
options = {
'suppress_connection_errors': False,
'connection_timeout': None
}
chrome_options = chromeOptions()
chrome_options.add_argument("--start-maximized")
chrome_options.add_argument("--incognito")
chrome_options.add_argument('--log-level=2')
chrome_options.add_argument("--window-size=1920,1080")
chrome_options.add_argument("--disable-extensions")
chrome_options.add_argument('--allow-running-insecure-content')
chrome_options.add_argument('--headless')
driver = webdriver.Chrome(ChromeDriverManager().install(), seleniumwire_options=options, chrome_options=chrome_options)
userAgent = driver.execute_script("return navigator.userAgent;")
userAgent = userAgent.replace('Headless', '')
driver.execute_cdp_cmd('Network.setUserAgentOverride', {"userAgent": userAgent})
url = 'my URL goes here'
driver.get(url)
print(driver.requests)
Same issue with FireFox, headless does not work but regular browsing does. Any idea what might cause this problem and what could solve it? I've also tried adding the following arguments to Chrome options without any luck:
chrome_options.add_argument("--proxy-server='direct://'")
chrome_options.add_argument("--proxy-bypass-list=*")
chrome_options.add_argument('--disable-gpu')
chrome_options.add_argument('--disable-dev-shm-usage')
chrome_options.add_argument('--no-sandbox')
chrome_options.add_argument('--ignore-certificate-errors')
chrome_options.add_argument('--headless')
chrome_options.add_argument('--ignore-certificate-errors-spki-list')
chrome_options.add_argument('--ignore-ssl-errors')
This may have been solved - I noticed that I first set the window size to maximize and after that set it to 1920,1080. When I removed the argument to maximize
chrome_options.add_argument("--start-maximized") the problem disappeared and now the script works once again.
I'm not sure if this actually solved it or whether it was something else, since Selenium is a bit finicky and sometimes data just won't load the same way for the same web page, but at least now it works.

How to configure ChromeDriver to initiate Chrome browser in Headless mode through Selenium?

I'm working on a python script to web-scrape and have gone down the path of using Chromedriver as one of the packages. I would like this to operate in the background without any pop-up windows. I'm using the option 'headless' on chromedriver and it seems to do the job in terms of not showing the browser window, however, I still see the .exe file running. See the screenshot of what I'm talking about. Screenshot
This is the code I am using to initiate ChromeDriver:
options = webdriver.ChromeOptions()
options.add_experimental_option("excludeSwitches",["ignore-certificate-errors"])
options.add_argument('headless')
options.add_argument('window-size=0x0')
chrome_driver_path = "C:\Python27\Scripts\chromedriver.exe"
Things I've tried to do is alter the window size in the options to 0x0 but I'm not sure that did anything as the .exe file still popped up.
Any ideas of how I can do this?
I am using Python 2.7 FYI
It should look like this:
from selenium import webdriver
from selenium.webdriver.chrome.options import Options
options = Options()
options.add_argument('--headless')
options.add_argument('--disable-gpu') # Last I checked this was necessary.
driver = webdriver.Chrome(CHROMEDRIVER_PATH, chrome_options=options)
This works for me using Python 3.6, I'm sure it'll work for 2.7 too.
Update 2018-10-26: These days you can just do this:
from selenium import webdriver
from selenium.webdriver.chrome.options import Options
options = Options()
options.headless = True
driver = webdriver.Chrome(CHROMEDRIVER_PATH, options=options)
Answer update of 13-October-2018
To initiate a google-chrome-headless browsing context using Selenium driven ChromeDriver now you can just set the --headless property to true through an instance of Options() class as follows:
Effective code block:
from selenium import webdriver
from selenium.webdriver.chrome.options import Options
options = Options()
options.headless = True
driver = webdriver.Chrome(options=options, executable_path=r'C:\path\to\chromedriver.exe')
driver.get("http://google.com/")
print ("Headless Chrome Initialized")
driver.quit()
Answer update of 23-April-2018
Invoking google-chrome in headless mode programmatically have become much easier with the availability of the method set_headless(headless=True) as follows :
Documentation :
set_headless(headless=True)
Sets the headless argument
Args:
headless: boolean value indicating to set the headless option
Sample Code :
from selenium import webdriver
from selenium.webdriver.chrome.options import Options
options = Options()
options.set_headless(headless=True)
driver = webdriver.Chrome(options=options, executable_path=r'C:\path\to\chromedriver.exe')
driver.get("http://google.com/")
print ("Headless Chrome Initialized")
driver.quit()
Note : --disable-gpu argument is implemented internally.
Original Answer of Mar 30 '2018
While working with Selenium Client 3.11.x, ChromeDriver v2.38 and Google Chrome v65.0.3325.181 in Headless mode you have to consider the following points :
You need to add the argument --headless to invoke Chrome in headless mode.
For Windows OS systems you need to add the argument --disable-gpu
As per Headless: make --disable-gpu flag unnecessary --disable-gpu flag is not required on Linux Systems and MacOS.
As per SwiftShader fails an assert on Windows in headless mode --disable-gpu flag will become unnecessary on Windows Systems too.
Argument start-maximized is required for a maximized Viewport.
Here is the link to details about Viewport.
You may require to add the argument --no-sandbox to bypass the OS security model.
Effective windows code block :
from selenium import webdriver
from selenium.webdriver.chrome.options import Options
options = Options()
options.add_argument("--headless") # Runs Chrome in headless mode.
options.add_argument('--no-sandbox') # Bypass OS security model
options.add_argument('--disable-gpu') # applicable to windows os only
options.add_argument('start-maximized') #
options.add_argument('disable-infobars')
options.add_argument("--disable-extensions")
driver = webdriver.Chrome(chrome_options=options, executable_path=r'C:\path\to\chromedriver.exe')
driver.get("http://google.com/")
print ("Headless Chrome Initialized on Windows OS")
Effective linux code block :
from selenium import webdriver
from selenium.webdriver.chrome.options import Options
options = Options()
options.add_argument("--headless") # Runs Chrome in headless mode.
options.add_argument('--no-sandbox') # # Bypass OS security model
options.add_argument('start-maximized')
options.add_argument('disable-infobars')
options.add_argument("--disable-extensions")
driver = webdriver.Chrome(chrome_options=options, executable_path='/path/to/chromedriver')
driver.get("http://google.com/")
print ("Headless Chrome Initialized on Linux OS")
Steps through YouTube Video
How to initialize Chrome Browser in Maximized Mode through Selenium
Outro
How to make firefox headless programmatically in Selenium with python?
tl; dr
Here is the link to the Sandbox story.
Update August 20, 2020 -- Now is simple!
chrome_options = webdriver.ChromeOptions()
chrome_options.headless = True
self.driver = webdriver.Chrome(
executable_path=DRIVER_PATH, chrome_options=chrome_options)
UPDATED
It works fine in my case:
from selenium import webdriver
options = webdriver.ChromeOptions()
options.headless = True
driver = webdriver.Chrome(CHROMEDRIVER_PATH, options=options)
Just changed in 2020. Works fine for me.
So after correcting my code to:
options = webdriver.ChromeOptions()
options.add_experimental_option("excludeSwitches",["ignore-certificate-errors"])
options.add_argument('--disable-gpu')
options.add_argument('--headless')
chrome_driver_path = "C:\Python27\Scripts\chromedriver.exe"
The .exe file still came up when running the script. Although this did get rid of some extra output telling me "Failed to launch GPU process".
What ended up working is running my Python script using a .bat file
So basically,
Save python script if a folder
Open text editor, and dump the following code (edit to your script of course)
c:\python27\python.exe c:\SampleFolder\ThisIsMyScript.py %*
Save the .txt file and change the extension to .bat
Double click this to run the file
So this just opened the script in Command Prompt and ChromeDriver seems to be operating within this window without popping out to the front of my screen and thus solving the problem.
The .exe would be running anyway. According to Google - "Run in headless mode, i.e., without a UI or display server dependencies."
Better prepend 2 dashes to command line arguments, i.e. options.add_argument('--headless')
In headless mode, it is also suggested to disable the GPU, i.e. options.add_argument('--disable-gpu')
Try using ChromeDriverManager
from selenium import webdriver
from webdriver_manager.chrome import ChromeDriverManager
from selenium.webdriver.chrome.options import Options
chrome_options = Options()
chrome_options.set_headless()
browser =webdriver.Chrome(ChromeDriverManager().install(),chrome_options=chrome_options)
browser.get('https://google.com')
# capture the screen
browser.get_screenshot_as_file("capture.png")
Solutions above don't work with websites with cloudflare protection, example: https://paxful.com/fr/buy-bitcoin.
Modify agent as follows:
options.add_argument("user-agent=Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/84.0.4147.125 Safari/537.36")
Fix found here:
What is the difference in accessing Cloudflare website using ChromeDriver/Chrome in normal/headless mode through Selenium Python
from chromedriver_py import binary_path
chrome_options = webdriver.ChromeOptions()
chrome_options.add_argument('--headless')
chrome_options.add_argument('--no-sandbox')
chrome_options.add_argument('--disable-gpu')
chrome_options.add_argument('--window-size=1280x1696')
chrome_options.add_argument('--user-data-dir=/tmp/user-data')
chrome_options.add_argument('--hide-scrollbars')
chrome_options.add_argument('--enable-logging')
chrome_options.add_argument('--log-level=0')
chrome_options.add_argument('--v=99')
chrome_options.add_argument('--single-process')
chrome_options.add_argument('--data-path=/tmp/data-path')
chrome_options.add_argument('--ignore-certificate-errors')
chrome_options.add_argument('--homedir=/tmp')
chrome_options.add_argument('--disk-cache-dir=/tmp/cache-dir')
chrome_options.add_argument('user-agent=Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/61.0.3163.100 Safari/537.36')
driver = webdriver.Chrome(executable_path = binary_path,options=chrome_options)
System.setProperty("webdriver.chrome.driver",
"D:\\Lib\\chrome_driver_latest\\chromedriver_win32\\chromedriver.exe");
ChromeOptions chromeOptions = new ChromeOptions();
chromeOptions.addArguments("--allow-running-insecure-content");
chromeOptions.addArguments("--window-size=1920x1080");
chromeOptions.addArguments("--disable-gpu");
chromeOptions.setHeadless(true);
ChromeDriver driver = new ChromeDriver(chromeOptions);
chromeoptions=add_argument("--no-sandbox");
add_argument("--ignore-certificate-errors");
add_argument("--disable-dev-shm-usage'")
is not a supported browser
solution:
Open Browser ${event_url} ${BROWSER} options=add_argument("--no-sandbox"); add_argument("--ignore-certificate-errors"); add_argument("--disable-dev-shm-usage'")
don't forget to add spaces between ${BROWSER} options
There is an option to hide the chromeDriver.exe window in alpha and beta versions of Selenium 4.
from selenium import webdriver
from selenium.webdriver.chrome.service import Service as ChromeService # Similar thing for firefox also!
from subprocess import CREATE_NO_WINDOW # This flag will only be available in windows
chrome_service = ChromeService('chromedriver', creationflags=CREATE_NO_WINDOW)
driver = webdriver.Chrome(service=chrome_service) # No longer console window opened, niether will chromedriver output
You can check it out from here. To pip install beta or alpha versions, you can do "pip install selenium==4.0.0.a7" or "pip install selenium==4.0.0.b4" (a7 means alpha-7 and b4 means beta-4 so for other versions you want, you can modify the command.) To import a specific version of a library in python you can look here.
RECENT UPDATE
Recently there is an update performed on headless mode of Chrome. The flag --headless is now modified and can be used as below
For Chrome version 109 and above, --headless=new flag allows us to explore full functionality Chrome browser in headless mode.
For Chrome version 108 and below (till Version 96), --headless=chrome option will provide us the headless chrome browser.
So, let's add
options.add_argument("--headless=new")
for newer version of Chrome in headless mode as mentioned above.
The below works fine for me with Chrome version 110.0.5481.104
chrome_driver_path = r"E:\driver\chromedriver.exe"
options = webdriver.ChromeOptions()
options.add_argument('--disable-gpu')
//New Update
options.add_argument("--headless=new")
options.binary_location = r"C:\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe"
browser = webdriver.Chrome(chrome_driver_path, options=options)
browser.get('https://www.google.com')
Update August 2021:
The fastest way to do is probably:
from selenium import webdriver
options = webdriver.ChromeOptions()
options.set_headless = True
driver = webdriver.Chrome(options=options)
options.headless = True is deprecated.

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