Alternatives to execute a selenium script

Question

I have a selenium script with python 3. I need to run it every day at 7AM for 5 minutes but I cannot leave my laptop on 24/7 just for it. What would be the easiest/best alternative?

I checked Lambda AWS but I am unable to install chrome (or the headless version of it) there and I have no experience with servers.

Answer 1

AWS Lambda is a viable solution for your goal - especially if the script is going to have a small runtime. They have recently increased the maximum execution time to 15 minutes, so you should be ok.

Getting headless Chrome in Lambda (in Python; it's full of JS/node.js solutions out there :)) is doable - I myself have used successfully this project in the past - https://github.com/21Buttons/pychromeless

To schedule the execution at your desired time you could use Amazon's CloudWatch.

Answer 2

To execute a Selenium script with Python 3 without installing a browser you can use the GhostDriver.

GhostDriver

Ghost Driver is an implementation of the Remote WebDriver protocol using PhantomJS as back-end. GhostDriver is designed to be integral part of PhantomJS itself with JavaScript API.

Additional WebDriver Capabilities through GhostDriver

• phantomjs.page.settings.SETTING = VALUE
• phantomjs.page.customHeaders.HEADER = VALUE
• phantomjs.page.whitelist
• phantomjs.page.blacklist
• unhandledPromptBehavior
• loggingPrefs
• phantomjs.binary.path
• phantomjs.ghostdriver.path
• phantomjs.cli.args
• phantomjs.ghostdriver.cli.args

Main Advantages of GhostDriver

• Screen Capture
• Page Automation
• Network Monitoring
• To run Unit tests on command line
• Combined with QUnit for the test suite

An Example

• Code Block :

  from selenium import webdriver
  
  driver = webdriver.PhantomJS(executable_path='/path/to/phantomjs')
  driver.get('https://www.google.com/')
  print(driver.title)
  driver.quit()
  

• Console Output:

  Google