AutoSelenium: Zero-Setup Selenium

This Python 3 library eliminates all setup headaches when using Selenium by automatically downloading and managing both Firefox and geckodriver.

Installing

pip install autoselenium

That's it! No manual downloads, no PATH configuration, no compatibility checking.

Usage

>>> from autoselenium import Firefox
>>> from selenium.webdriver.common.by import By
>>>
>>> # Uses system Firefox with auto-downloaded geckodriver
>>> driver = Firefox(headless=True)
>>>
>>> driver.get('https://example.com')
>>> driver.find_element(By.TAG_NAME, 'div').get_attribute('outerHTML')
'<div><h1>Example Domain</h1><p>This domain is for use in illustrative examples...</p></div>'
>>>
>>> # Add rendering data to elements
>>> driver.get_with_render('https://example.com')
>>> driver.find_element(By.TAG_NAME, 'div').get_attribute('outerHTML')
'<div data-xpath="/html[1]/body[1]/div[1]" data-computed-style="display:block;margin:0px;..." data-width="1200" data-height="600" data-width-rel="1" data-height-rel="0.5">...'
>>>
>>> # Use specific browser and driver versions
>>> driver = Firefox(browser_detection=True, browser_version='120.0', driver_version='0.35.0')
>>>
>>> driver.quit()

Parameters

The Firefox class extends selenium.webdriver.Firefox with these additional parameters:

• browser_detection: Boolean, False by default. When True, downloads and uses a specific Firefox version instead of system Firefox.
• browser_version: String, 'default' by default. Firefox version to download. Use 'default' for latest stable version.
• driver_detection: Boolean, True by default. When True, automatically downloads the appropriate geckodriver.
• driver_version: String, None by default. Geckodriver version to use. When None, uses latest version.
• headless: Boolean, False by default. When True, runs Firefox without a GUI.
• disable_images: Boolean, True by default. When True, disables image loading for better performance.
• disable_flash: Boolean, True by default. When True, disables Flash plugin.
• open_links_same_tab: Boolean, False by default. When True, forces all links to open in the same tab.
• timeout: Integer, 30 by default. Page load timeout in seconds.
• options: Firefox Options object, None by default. Custom Firefox options (merged with above settings).

All standard Selenium Firefox parameters are also supported.

Methods

get_with_render(url, render_selector='body')

Works like driver.get(url) but adds rendering metadata to elements selected by render_selector:

• data-xpath: XPath of the element
• data-computed-style: Full computed CSS styles
• data-width: Element width in pixels
• data-height: Element height in pixels
• data-width-rel: Width relative to page width (0-1)
• data-height-rel: Height relative to page height (0-1)

Elements without rendering (display:none, etc.) are automatically removed.

Features

🚀 Zero Configuration

• Automatically downloads geckodriver for your platform (including ARM64)
• Optionally downloads Firefox itself for complete version control
• Works out of the box on Windows, macOS, and Linux

🔄 Smart Version Management

• Automatically uses latest geckodriver and Firefox versions
• Caches downloads to avoid re-downloading
• Supports manual version pinning for reproducible environments

🏗️ Platform Support

• Full ARM64 support (Apple Silicon, Raspberry Pi, etc.)
• All major platforms: Windows (32/64/ARM64), macOS (Intel/ARM64), Linux (32/64/ARM64)
• Solves the platform compatibility issues that break vanilla Selenium

⚡ Performance Optimized

• Images disabled by default for faster loading
• Progress bars for large downloads (using tqdm)
• Efficient caching prevents redundant downloads

🔧 Developer Friendly

• Full Selenium 4 compatibility
• Modern Python API (no deprecated methods)
• Automatic cleanup on exit
• Rich rendering analysis tools

Requirements

• Python 3.7+
• requests
• selenium >= 4.0
• tqdm

Platform-Specific Notes

Raspberry Pi / ARM64 Systems

AutoSelenium specifically solves ARM64 compatibility issues that break standard Selenium:

# This fails on ARM64 with vanilla Selenium
driver = webdriver.Firefox()  # ❌ "Unsupported platform/architecture combination"

# This works perfectly with AutoSelenium  
driver = Firefox()  # ✅ Downloads ARM64 geckodriver automatically

Isolated Environments

Perfect for Docker, CI/CD, or any environment where you can't install Firefox:

# Downloads everything needed automatically
driver = Firefox(browser_detection=True, headless=True)  # ✅ Completely self-contained

Examples

Basic Web Scraping

from autoselenium import Firefox
from selenium.webdriver.common.by import By

driver = Firefox(headless=True)
driver.get('https://example.com')
title = driver.find_element(By.TAG_NAME, 'h1').text
print(f'Page title: {title}')
driver.quit()

Version-Controlled Testing

# Pin exact versions for reproducible tests
driver = Firefox(
    browser_detection=True,
    browser_version='119.0',
    driver_version='0.34.0',
    headless=True
)

Rendering Analysis

driver = Firefox()
driver.get_with_render('https://example.com')

# Find all visible elements with their dimensions
elements = driver.find_elements(By.CSS_SELECTOR, '[data-width]')
for el in elements:
    width = el.get_attribute('data-width')
    height = el.get_attribute('data-height') 
    xpath = el.get_attribute('data-xpath')
    print(f'{xpath}: {width}x{height}px')

Troubleshooting

Downloads Failing

If downloads fail, check your internet connection and try:

# Use specific versions instead of 'default'
driver = Firefox(browser_version='120.0', driver_version='0.34.0')

Permission Errors

Ensure the script has write permissions to the package directory, or run:

pip install --user autoselenium

Contributing

Found a bug or want to add a feature? Check out the issues and submit a pull request!

Changelog

v1.0.0 (2024)

Major Rewrite - Breaking Changes

• 🚀 Full ARM64 support (Apple Silicon, Raspberry Pi)
• 🔄 Automatic browser downloads with browser_detection=True
• ⚡ Latest version detection for both Firefox and geckodriver
• 🛠️ Selenium 4 compatibility (updated from Selenium 3)
• 📊 Download progress bars using tqdm
• 🧹 Simplified API with better parameter names
• 🌐 Extended platform support (Windows ARM64, Linux ARM64)

Breaking Changes from v0.x:

• Parameter detect_driver_path → driver_detection
• Parameter version → driver_version
• Requires Selenium 4+ and Python 3.7+
• Default timeout increased from 15s to 30s

v0.1.0 (2019)

• More helpful exceptions
• Python 3 compatibility fixes
• Documentation improvements

v0.0.1 (2019)

• Initial release
• Basic geckodriver management