Smart Webdriver Manager

A smart webdriver manager. Inspired by webdriver_manager and chromedriver-binary-auto.

Unlike other managers, this module manages the driver, browser, and data directory indepdently of the system installed browser.

The manager requires only a specified browser version (i.e. Chromium 90, 110, 118, etc.). It manages the remaining components.

These are then cached for future use in the user-specified or system-default directory. In other words:

for version in [0, 75, 80, 95, 96]: # 0 -> latest
  # auto-fetch and configure all the needed compomenets and run the automation

Supported Driver/Platform

	Chromium	Firefox
Windows	x	-
Linux	x	-

I do not plan to support MacOS. Contributions are welcome through pull requests.

Examples

pip install smart-webdriver-manager

import os
from selenium import webdriver
from selenium.webdriver import ChromeOptions
from selenium.webdriver.chrome.service import Service
from smart_webdriver_manager import ChromeDriverManager

version = os.getenv('MY_ENVIRONMENTAL_VARIABLE')
cdm = ChromeDriverManager(version=version)

driver_path = cdm.get_driver()
browser_path = cdm.get_browser()
user_data_path = cdm.get_browser_user_data()

options = ChromeOptions()
options.binary_location = browser_path
options.add_argument(f'--user-data-dir={user_data_path}')
service = Service(executable_path=driver_path)
driver = webdriver.Chrome(service=service, options=options)
try:
    driver.get("http://google.com")
finally:
    driver.quit()

The compoenents themselves are modular. You can use the the driver or the browser independently. However, both the driver and browser are fetched together. If you only need a driver then other modules may be better suited.

Whats really nice is the work required to update automation is now minimal. Just decrement back if the automation doesn't work. No need to install/uninstall browsers when verifying versions.

Development

There are two ways to run local tests

pip install -U pip poetry tox
git clone https://github.com/bissli/smart-webdriver-manager.git && cd smart-webdriver-manager
tox

pip install -U pip poetry
git clone https://github.com/bissli/smart-webdriver-manager.git && cd smart-webdriver-manager
poetry install --with test
poetry shell
pytest

Technical Layout

Some module definitions:

• Version: main browser version, ie Chrome 95
• Release: subversion: ie Chrome 95.01.1121
• Revision: browser-only, snapshots within a release

To clarify how the module works, below is the cache directory illustrated:

1. For browsers with revisions, we return the latest revision to the browser.
2. For driver with releases, we return the latest releases to the driver corresponding to the browser.
3. A user data directory is aligned with the release (see TODO)

For example if the user requests chromedriver v96, revision 92512 will be returned for the browser and 96.1.85.111 for the driver.

"""Cache structure
swm/
    browsers/
        chromium/ [linux]
            96.1.85.54/
                929511/
                    chrome-linux/
                        chrome
                        ...
                    929511-chrome-linux.zip
                929512/
                    chrome-linux/
                        chrome
                        ...
                    929512-chrome-linux.zip
            user-data/
                ...
        firefox/
          ...
    drivers/
        chromedriver/ [windows]
            96.1.85.54/
                driver.zip
                chromedriver.exe
            96.1.85.111/
                driver.zip
                chromedriver.exe
        geckodriver/ [linux]
            0.29.8/
                driver.zip
                geckodriver
            0.29.9/
                driver.zip
                geckodriver
    browsers.json
    drivers.json
"""

The system default directory for the cache is as follows:

• Windows: ~/appdata/roaming/swm
• Linux: ~/.local/share/swm

TODO

• Complete the cache clear/remove methods. Write methods to delete the data directory or parts of the cache.
• Add Firefox as another supported platform. Current support is limited to Chromium/Chromedriver.
• Ability to recover if part of the cache is missing (ie a browser not there but browsers.json says so) (check path exists)
• Change the user data directory to fall under the major version, not release (see illustration above).
• FIX: No need to look for the "latest" version of driver if a supported version driver already exists

Contributing

Active contributions are welcome (collaboration). Please open a PR for features or bug fixes.