How do I use the HTMLUnit driver with Selenium from Python?

Question

How do I tell Selenium to use HTMLUnit?

I'm running selenium-server-standalone-2.0b1.jar as a Selenium server in the background, and the latest Python bindings installed with "pip install -U selenium".

Everything works fine with Firefox. But I'd like to use HTMLUnit, as it is lighter weight and doesn't need X. This is my attempt to do so:

>>> import selenium
>>> s = selenium.selenium("localhost", 4444, "*htmlunit", "http://localhost/")
>>> s.start()
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
  File "/usr/local/lib/python2.6/dist-packages/selenium/selenium/selenium.py", line 189, in start
    result = self.get_string("getNewBrowserSession", start_args)
  File "/usr/local/lib/python2.6/dist-packages/selenium/selenium/selenium.py", line 223, in get_string
    result = self.do_command(verb, args)
  File "/usr/local/lib/python2.6/dist-packages/selenium/selenium/selenium.py", line 217, in do_command
    raise Exception, data
Exception: Failed to start new browser session: Browser not supported: *htmlunit

Supported browsers include:
  *firefox
  *mock
  *firefoxproxy
  *pifirefox
  *chrome
  *iexploreproxy
  *iexplore
  *firefox3
  *safariproxy
  *googlechrome
  *konqueror
  *firefox2
  *safari
  *piiexplore
  *firefoxchrome
  *opera
  *iehta
  *custom

So the question is, what is the HTMLUnit driver called? How do I enable it?

The code for HTMLUnit seems to be in the source for Selenium 2, so I expected it to be available by default like the other browsers. I can't find any instructions on how to enable it.

I've tagged this with selenium-rc as well, as I don't mind whether I use Selenium 2 or Selenium-RC. — frabcus
– frabcus, Commented Jan 6, 2011 at 18:30
possible duplicate of How do I use the HtmlUnit driver with Selenium through the Python bindings? — CraigTeegarden
– CraigTeegarden, Commented Jun 6, 2013 at 16:41

James Murty · Accepted Answer · 2011-04-01 19:55:22Z

16

As of the 2.0b3 release of the python client you can create an HTMLUnit webdriver via a remote connection like so:

from selenium import webdriver
driver = webdriver.Remote(
  desired_capabilities=webdriver.DesiredCapabilities.HTMLUNIT)
driver.get('http://www.google.com')

You can also use the HTMLUNITWITHJS capability item for a browser with Javascript support.

Note that you need to run the Selenium Java server for this to work, since HTMLUnit is implemented on the Java side.

answered Apr 1, 2011 at 19:55

James Murty

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2 Comments

Minions Over a year ago

I run selenium-server-standalone-3.141.59, but it doesn't work!

James Murty Over a year ago

@ghanem This answer is from 2011, you probably need to find a more recent solution

JulienD · Accepted Answer · 2016-03-09 16:35:18Z

5

using the selenium 2.20.0.jar server and matching python version, I am able to use HtmlUnitDriver by specifying the browser as *mock

from selenium import webdriver
from selenium.webdriver.common.desired_capabilities import DesiredCapabilities

server_url = "http://%s:%s/wd/hub" % (test_host, test_port)
dc = DesiredCapabilities.HTMLUNIT
wd = webdriver.Remote(server_url, dc)
wd.get('http://www.google.com')

edited Mar 9, 2016 at 16:35

JulienD

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answered Mar 8, 2012 at 22:05

tom

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Comments

Alexey Kuzminich · Accepted Answer · 2011-02-17 12:42:27Z

2

I use it like this:

from selenium.remote import connect                                                                                                                          

b = connect('htmlunit')                                                                                                                                      
b.get('http://google.com')                                                                                                                                   

q = b.find_element_by_name('q')                                                                                                                              
q.send_keys('selenium')                                                                                                                                      
q.submit()                                                                                                                                                   

for l in b.find_elements_by_xpath('//h3/a'):                                                                                                                 
    print('%s\n\t%s\n' % (l.get_text(), l.get_attribute('href')))

answered Feb 17, 2011 at 12:42

Alexey Kuzminich

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1 Comment

uhbif19 Over a year ago

Where are any way to provide Selenium 1 interface by HtmlUnit ?

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