Selenium Headless chrome runs much slower - python

I have a class for Selenium parser:
class DynamicParser(Parser):
"""Selenium Parser with processing JS"""
driver: Chrome = None
def __init__(self, driver_path='./chromedriver', headless=True):
chrome_options = Options()
if headless:
chrome_options.add_argument("--headless")
chrome_options.add_argument("window-size=1920,1080")
# bypass OS security
chrome_options.add_argument('--no-sandbox')
# overcome limited resources
chrome_options.add_argument('--disable-dev-shm-usage')
# don't tell chrome that it is automated
chrome_options.add_experimental_option(
"excludeSwitches", ["enable-automation"])
chrome_options.add_experimental_option('useAutomationExtension', False)
# disable images
prefs = {"profile.managed_default_content_settings.images": 2}
chrome_options.add_experimental_option("prefs", prefs)
# Setting Capabilities
capabilities = DesiredCapabilities.CHROME.copy()
capabilities['acceptSslCerts'] = True
capabilities['acceptInsecureCerts'] = True
self.driver = Chrome(chrome_options=chrome_options,
executable_path=driver_path, desired_capabilities=capabilities)
def goto(self, url: str):
"""Goes to specified URL"""
self.driver.get(url)
def get_seller_name(self) -> str:
"""Returns seller's name"""
offer_actions_tag = self.driver.find_element_by_class_name(
'offer-user__actions')
profile_link_tag = offer_actions_tag.find_element_by_tag_name('a')
return profile_link_tag.text.strip()
Also I have a test script, which creates DynamicParser, goes to some page and calls .get_seller_name().
I noticed that when I run Chromedriver headless, it runs much slower, so i tested it using time python3 test.py.
Output for headless chrome:
python3 test.py 2,98s user 0,94s system 3% cpu 2:04,65 total
Output for non-headless chrome:
python3 test.py 1,48s user 0,33s system 47% cpu 3,790 total
As we can see, headless chrome runs almost 33 times slower!
Chrome version: 83.0.4103.116
Chromedriver version: 83.0.4103.39
I don't really understand what's the problem. When I developed my previous application, headless chrome worked fast enough.

Just found the problem. It was
chrome_options.add_argument('--disable-dev-shm-usage')
I supposed that it should have unlimit chrome resources, but it definitely doesn't work in this case.

When running headless driver you can also use those settings for the performance improvement.
browser_options = webdriver.ChromeOptions()
browser_options.headless = True
image_preferences = {"profile.managed_default_content_settings.images": 2}
browser_options.add_experimental_option("prefs", image_preferences)

Related

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)

How to disable file download popup in firefox using selenium and python?

Im trying to download some reports from web page, using selenium and python
when i click on download link firefox shows save/open dialog
I have used firefox profile configuration as follows
profile = webdriver.FirefoxProfile()
profile.set_preference("browser.download.folderList", 2)
profile.set_preference("browser.download.manager.showWhenStarting", False)
profile.set_preference("browser.download.panel.shown", False)
profile.set_preference("browser.helperApps.neverAsk.openFile", "application/pdf,attachment/pdf")
profile.set_preference("browser.helperApps.neverAsk.saveToDisk", "application/pdf,attachment/pdf")
profile.set_preference("browser.download.dir", "c:\\firefox_downloads\\")
self.browser = webdriver.Firefox(profile)
but still it shows message box,
i have changed
self.browser = webdriver.Firefox(firefox_profile=profile)
like above but no chance >
Can any one help me to resolve this?
I have a little helper function which works for me.
It uses chromedriver though.
def driver_download(location_for_download):
# options = Options()
# options.headless = True
chrome_options = webdriver.ChromeOptions()
prefs = {'download.default_directory': location_for_download}
chrome_options.add_experimental_option('prefs', prefs)
# driver = webdriver.Chrome(chrome_options=chrome_options)
driver = webdriver.Chrome("/usr/lib/chromium-browser/chromedriver", chrome_options=chrome_options)
return driver
Note: For my particular application, I was unable to use the headless. But it should work if its a direct link to the file.

--headless flag no longer works after upgrade to chrome 76/chromedriver 76

I am running python selenium tests using headless chrome. After updating to chrome Version 76.0.3809.87 and chromedriver version ChromeDriver 76.0.3809.68, the chromeOptions that I use (see code sample below)... no longer work. i.e. the browser is launched (non headless) and the resolution settings are also not working
Anyone else seeing this after upgrading to chromedriver 75/76?
chrome_options = {'args': ['headless', '--window-size=1920,1080', 'no-sandbox', '--dns-prefetch-disable','--disable-dev-shm-usage']}
capabilities = {'browserName': 'chrome', 'chromeOptions':chrome_options}
cls.driver = webdriver.Chrome(desired_capabilities=capabilities)
You don't need to use desiredCapabilities to pass these arguments you can use Options instead. I have tested and it works.
Google Chrome - 76.0.3809.87
ChromeDriver - 76.0.3809.68
Selenium - 3.141.0
Python - 3.7.2
from selenium import webdriver
from selenium.webdriver.chrome.options import Options
options = Options()
options.headless = True
driver = webdriver.Chrome(options=options)
driver.get('https://www.google.com')
driver.save_screenshot("screenshot.png")
driver.quit()
Check the screenshot obtained from the headless browser below.

Run headless firefox in Selenium grid remote [duplicate]

I am running this code with python, selenium, and firefox but still get 'head' version of firefox:
binary = FirefoxBinary('C:\\Program Files (x86)\\Mozilla Firefox\\firefox.exe', log_file=sys.stdout)
binary.add_command_line_options('-headless')
self.driver = webdriver.Firefox(firefox_binary=binary)
I also tried some variations of binary:
binary = FirefoxBinary('C:\\Program Files\\Nightly\\firefox.exe', log_file=sys.stdout)
binary.add_command_line_options("--headless")
To invoke Firefox Browser headlessly, you can set the headless property through Options() class as follows:
from selenium import webdriver
from selenium.webdriver.firefox.options import Options
options = Options()
options.headless = True
driver = webdriver.Firefox(options=options, executable_path=r'C:\Utility\BrowserDrivers\geckodriver.exe')
driver.get("http://google.com/")
print ("Headless Firefox Initialized")
driver.quit()
There's another way to accomplish headless mode. If you need to disable or enable the headless mode in Firefox, without changing the code, you can set the environment variable MOZ_HEADLESS to whatever if you want Firefox to run headless, or don't set it at all.
This is very useful when you are using for example continuous integration and you want to run the functional tests in the server but still be able to run the tests in normal mode in your PC.
$ MOZ_HEADLESS=1 python manage.py test # testing example in Django with headless Firefox
or
$ export MOZ_HEADLESS=1 # this way you only have to set it once
$ python manage.py test functional/tests/directory
$ unset MOZ_HEADLESS # if you want to disable headless mode
Steps through YouTube Video
Mozilla Firefox in Headless Mode through Selenium 3.5.2 (Java)
Login into Gmail Account using Headless Chrome through Selenium Java
Outro
How to configure ChromeDriver to initiate Chrome browser in Headless mode through Selenium?
The first answer does't work anymore.
This worked for me:
from selenium.webdriver.firefox.options import Options as FirefoxOptions
from selenium import webdriver
options = FirefoxOptions()
options.add_argument("--headless")
driver = webdriver.Firefox(options=options)
driver.get("http://google.com")
My answer:
set_headless(headless=True) is deprecated.
https://seleniumhq.github.io/selenium/docs/api/py/webdriver_firefox/selenium.webdriver.firefox.options.html
options.headless = True
works for me
Used below code to set driver type based on need of Headless / Head for both Firefox and chrome:
// Can pass browser type
if brower.lower() == 'chrome':
driver = webdriver.Chrome('..\drivers\chromedriver')
elif brower.lower() == 'headless chrome':
ch_Options = Options()
ch_Options.add_argument('--headless')
ch_Options.add_argument("--disable-gpu")
driver = webdriver.Chrome('..\drivers\chromedriver',options=ch_Options)
elif brower.lower() == 'firefox':
driver = webdriver.Firefox(executable_path=r'..\drivers\geckodriver.exe')
elif brower.lower() == 'headless firefox':
ff_option = FFOption()
ff_option.add_argument('--headless')
ff_option.add_argument("--disable-gpu")
driver = webdriver.Firefox(executable_path=r'..\drivers\geckodriver.exe', options=ff_option)
elif brower.lower() == 'ie':
driver = webdriver.Ie('..\drivers\IEDriverServer')
else:
raise Exception('Invalid Browser Type')
To the OP or anyone currently interested, here's the section of code that's worked for me with firefox currently:
opt = webdriver.FirefoxOptions()
opt.add_argument('-headless')
ffox_driver = webdriver.Firefox(executable_path='\path\to\geckodriver', options=opt)
from selenium.webdriver.firefox.options import Options
if __name__ == "__main__":
options = Options()
options.add_argument('-headless')
driver = Firefox(executable_path='geckodriver', firefox_options=options)
wait = WebDriverWait(driver, timeout=10)
driver.get('http://www.google.com')
Tested, works as expected and this is from Official - Headless Mode | Mozilla
Nowadays with this code:
options = Options()
options.headless = True
driver = webdriver.Firefox(executable_path=GeckoDriverManager().install(),options=options)
We have a warning:
DeprecationWarning: executable_path has been deprecated, please pass in a Service object
Changing to this one, works perfectly:
#!/usr/bin/env python
# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-
# selenium drivers: https://www.selenium.dev/documentation/webdriver/getting_started/install_drivers/
# pip3 install selenium
# pip3 install webdriver-manager
# for custom firefox installation: link firefox to /usr/bin/firefox, example: ln -s /opt/firefox/firefox-bin /usr/bin/firefox
from selenium import webdriver
from webdriver_manager.firefox import GeckoDriverManager
from selenium.webdriver.firefox.options import Options
from selenium.webdriver.firefox.service import Service
options = Options()
options.headless = True
service = Service(executable_path=GeckoDriverManager().install())
driver = webdriver.Firefox(service=service, options=options)
driver.get("http://google.com/")
print("Headless Firefox Initialized")
driver.quit()

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.

Categories