Controlling a browser using Python, on a Mac

Question

I\'m looking for a way to programatically control a browser on a Mac (i.e. Firefox or Safari or Chrome/-ium or Opera, but not IE) using Python.

The actions I need includ

Answer 1

Checkout Mozmill https://github.com/mikeal/mozmill

Mozmill is a UI Automation framework for Mozilla apps like Firefox and Thunderbird. It's both an addon and a Python command-line tool. The addon provides an IDE for writing and running the JavaScript tests and the Python package provides a mechanism for running the tests from the command line as well as providing a way to test restarting the application.

Answer 2

Try mechanize, if you don't actually need a browser.

Example:

import re
import mechanize

br = mechanize.Browser()
br.open("http://www.example.com/")
# follow second link with element text matching regular expression
response1 = br.follow_link(text_regex=r"cheese\s*shop", nr=1)
assert br.viewing_html()
print br.title()
print response1.geturl()
print response1.info()  # headers
print response1.read()  # body

br.select_form(name="order")
# Browser passes through unknown attributes (including methods)
# to the selected HTMLForm.
br["cheeses"] = ["mozzarella", "caerphilly"]  # (the method here is __setitem__)
# Submit current form.  Browser calls .close() on the current response on
# navigation, so this closes response1
response2 = br.submit()

Answer 3

Might be a bit restrictive, but py-appscript may be the easiest way of controlling a Applescript'able browser from Python.

For more complex things, you can use the PyObjC to achieve pretty much anything - for example, webkit2png is a Python script which uses WebKit to load a page, and save an image of it. You need to have a decent understanding of Objective-C and Cocoa/etc to use it (as it just exposes ObjC objects to Python)

Screen-scaping may achieve what you want with much less complexity.

Answer 4

Maybe overpowered, but check out Marionette to control Firefox. There is a tutorial at readthedocs:

You first start a Marionette-enabled firefox instance:

firefox -marionette

Then you create a client:

client = Marionette('localhost', port=2828)
client.start_session()

Navigation f.ex. is done via

url = 'http://mozilla.org'
client.navigate(url)
client.go_back()
client.go_forward()
assert client.get_url() == url

Answer 5

Check out python-browsercontrol.

Also, you could read this forum page (I know, it's old, but it seems extremely relevant to your question): http://bytes.com/topic/python/answers/45528-python-client-side-browser-script-language

Also: http://docs.python.org/library/webbrowser.html

Example:

from browser import *
my_browser = Firefox(99, '/usr/lib/firefox/firefox-bin') my_browser.open_url('cnn.com')

open_url returns when the cnn.com home page document is loaded in the browser frame.

Answer 6

I like Selenium, it's scriptable through Python. The Selenium IDE only runs in Firefox, but Selenium RC supports multiple browsers.