Passing Selenium Webdriver in a parameter. Is it possible in Python?

Question

I'm new to Python.

The aim of my script is to parse Web page with Selenium Webdriver. There are two subtasks. The first task I've made with no errors. But all script was without any function.

Now I'm trying to solve the second task in a little bit complicated way. I want to use functions.

The question is:

Could I pass an active Selenium Webdriver in a function parameter?

The second question is:

If the answer is YES - could the second function also pass an active Webdriver to another function?

So I think about activating a Webdriver and passing it into functions without closing a session.

My code is:

for key, value in enumerate(headers):
    webdriver.DesiredCapabilities.PHANTOMJS[
        'phantomjs.page.customHeaders.{}'.format(key)] = value

w = webdriver.PhantomJS()

ps = q_yn('Perform new links parsing?', default='no')

if ps:
    csv_l = get_clist(w)

<...>

def get_clist(w):
    w.get(url)
    wait_pageload(w, 0)
    src = w.page_source
    BeautifulSoup(src, "lxml")
    ... (etc)

<..>

def wait_pageload(w, pt):
    if pt == 0:
        element = WebDriverWait(w, 10).until(
            EC.presence_of_element_located((By.CLASS_NAME, "serg_search_result")))
    elif pt == 1:
        element = WebDriverWait(w, 10).until(
            EC.presence_of_element_located((By.ID, "ya_share")))
    else:
        raise ValueError("Page type: %s is unknown" % pt)

When I try to build and run this script I see an error:

File "fts-crawl2.py", line 108, in wait_pageload
EC.presence_of_element_located((By.CLASS_NAME, "serg_s")))
  File "/usr/local/lib/python3.5/dist-packages/selenium/webdriver/support/
  wait.py", line 71, in until
  value = method(self._driver)

selenium.common.exceptions.WebDriverException: Message: Error - Unable
to load Atom 'find_element' from file ':/ghostdriver/./third_party/webdriver-
atoms/find_element.js'

RemcoW · Accepted Answer · 2016-06-17 07:58:56Z

3

Yes you can pass a WebDriver as a parameter to any function or method. The answer on your second question is also yes. A single WebDriver could be shared throughout your entire application if that's what you want to do. If this wasn't possible a very popular design pattern (Page Object) would not be possible.

answered Jun 17, 2016 at 7:58

RemcoW

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1 Comment

franchb Over a year ago

Thank you, @RemcoW. So It all should work. The exception is from the PhantomJS in Ubuntu 16.04 error described at this StackOverflow question

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