Web Browser automation using Selenium in Python

bored of doing repeated tasks in your browser like account creation, submitting forms etc, you can automate all these by using a simple python program with the help of selenium and chrome web driver

prerequisites before you start

like always you need to have a python version installed. if not, visit python.org and download the latest or stable version and install locally on your machine
Download chrome webdriver and save it in a path in your C drive ( preferably on the same path where python installed) Link to download https://chromedriver.chromium.org/downloads
Install selenium using pip, open command prompt -> run pip install selenium

The code below

from selenium import webdriver from getpass import getpass

usr = input('Enter Email') pwd = input('Enter Password')

browser = webdriver.Chrome(executable_path='C:\Python37-32/chromedriver.exe') url = "https://stackoverflow.com/" browser.get(url)

element = browser.find_element_by_link_text("Log in") element.click()

browser.find_element_by_xpath('//[@id="email"]').send_keys(usr) browser.find_element_by_xpath('//[@id="password"]').send_keys(pwd) login_btn=browser.find_element_by_xpath('//*[@id="submit-button"]').click()

Let’s see in detail what each line in this code is doing

We are here automating the login to a website stackoverflow.com , by running a python code

from selenium import webdriver # importing the selenium webdriver
from getpass import getpass # imprting getpass to mask password

usr = input(‘Enter Email’) # defining email with variable as user
pwd = input(‘Enter Password’) # defining email with variable as pwd

browser = webdriver.Chrome(executable_path=’C:\Python37-32/chromedriver.exe’) #locating the path where chromedriver.exe is stored in machine
url = “https://stackoverflow.com/” # URL to login
browser.get(url) # navigate to the URL

element = browser.find_element_by_link_text(“Log in”) # find the keyword in the web page as Log in
element.click() # click on the Log in

browser.find_element_by_xpath(‘//[@id=”email”]’).send_keys(usr) # finding the xpath of the login , passing the username value

browser.find_element_by_xpath(‘//[@id=”password”]’).send_keys(pwd) # finding the xpath of the password and passing the password value

login_btn=browser.find_element_by_xpath(‘//*[@id=”submit-button”]’).click() # finding the xpath of the submit button and click

How to find the XPATH

place the mouseholder where you need to find the xpath, here the username , password field and login button -> Right click-> inspect -> A window will open with id parameter -> right click -> copy -> xpath