Setup Selenium with Python and Chrome Driver on Ubuntu & Debian
Selenium is a versatile tool that can be used for automating browser-based tests. It has a wide range of features that make it an ideal choice for automating tests. Selenium can be used to automate tests for web applications and web services. Selenium supports a number of programming languages, including Java, C#, Python, and Ruby.
This makes it possible to write tests in the language that you are most comfortable with. In addition, Selenium has a large user community that provides support and help when needed.
In this blog post, you will learn to set up a Selenium environment on an Ubuntu system. Also provides you with a few examples of Selenium scripts written in Python.
Prerequisites
You must have Sudo privileged account access to the Ubuntu system.
One of the examples also required a desktop environment to be installed.
Step 1: Installing Google Chrome
Use the below steps to install the latest Google Chrome browser on Ubuntu and Debian systems.
- First of all, download the latest Gooogle Chrome Debian package on your system.
wget -nc https://dl.google.com/linux/direct/google-chrome-stable_current_amd64.deb sudo apt updatesudo apt install -f ./google-chrome-stable_current_amd64.deb
This will complete the Google Chrome on your Ubuntu or Debian system. This will also create an Apt PPA file for further upgrades.
Step 2: Installing Selenium and Webdriver for Python
We will use a virtual environment for running Python scripts. Follow the below steps to create Python virtual environment and install the required python modules.
- Create a directory to store Python scripts. Then switch to the newly-created directory.
python3 -m venv venvsource venv/bin/activate
Once the environment is activated, You will find the updated prompt as shown below screenshot:
Now use PIP to install the selenium and webdriver-manager Python modules under the virtual environment.
pip install selenium webdriver-manager 
Example 1: Selenium Python Script with Headless Chrome
Your system is ready to run Selenium scripts written in Python. Now, create a sample selenium script in Python that fetches the title of a website.
This script will run headless, So you can run it without an X desktop environment. You can simply SSH to your system and run the below example:
- Create a Python script and edit it in your favorite text editor: