Automate firefox with python?

Question

Been scouring the net for something like firewatir but for python. I'm trying to automate firefox on linux. Any suggestions?

Solution 1

The PyXPCOM extension is one possibility.

But looking at what firewatir provides, I have to 2nd the suggestion for twill. It's based on mechanize, which might also be useful in this context.

Solution 2

You could try selenium.

Solution 3

I use Selenium RC. All my tests are written in Python and are run with test suite.

One minor thing is that You either have to start selenium manually and point Your tests to it or start selenium from test suite which requires little bit of coding. But it's doable.

Generally I'm very pleased with this solution.

Solution 4

See if twill can help you. It can be used as a command line tool or as a python library.

Solution 5

I would suggest you to use Selenium instead of Mechanize/Twill because Mechanize would fail while handling Javascript.

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Comments

[legesh]

Do I still need Java for Selenium Server running?

[RyanBrady]

mechanize ended up giving me the most functionality...thx

[Łukasz]

Yes, as Selenium is written in Java.

[Rick]

just came across this and have to say that PyXPCOM looks really old and dusty, so to speak, its at least as old as 2001 and its hard to find much about how to use it, mechanize is ok but has some limitations like not able to handle javascript and also no way to automatically download normal things that are downloaded by a browser on page load (such as css, images, etc)

[Rick]

I don't think javascript would be appropriate for this it can't really compare to python for doing automation, etc but I suppose if you absolutely had to you could have javascript interact with your python script

[Everett Toews]

Link to PyXPCOM add-on is broken.

[antiplex]

looked nice but sadly development seems to have stopped as the last version is older than your post.