Download embedded PDF using Selenium/Python?

Question

I've tried some of the solutions posted at this site but I still cannot make this thing work. I have to grab a PDF from a secured website. I'm able to get all the way to the page that has the button to create the PDF but I cannot find code that will let me then download the PDF. Here's what I got so far and any help is much appreciated!

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

    driver = webdriver.Chrome()

    driver.get("https://service.medical.barco.com/server/jsp/login")

    username = driver.find_element_by_name('j_username')
    password = driver.find_element_by_name('j_password')

    username.send_keys("XXX")
    password.send_keys("XXX")

    driver.find_element_by_css_selector('[value="Log on"]').click()

    ##makes the PDF and shows it in the Google PDF viewer

    url = "https://service.medical.barco.com/server/spring/jsp/workstation/complianceCheckDetailReport/?displayId=932610524&date=1598328417477"

    driver.get(url)

    driver.find_element_by_class_name('href-button').click()

    ##This is probably unnecessary but I thought a direct link to the created PDF could give me a variable I could then download

    pdf = "https://service.medical.barco.com/server/spring/jsp/workstation/complianceCheckDetailReport/jasper/report.pdf?format=pdf&displayId=932610524&date=1598328417477"

    driver.get(pdf)

Sudipto Ghosh · Accepted Answer · 2020-08-28 14:38:30Z

6

Once you get to the PDF, there are high chances that Chromium/Google Chrome will open the same in its PDF.js-based viewer. In order to get around this and 'download' the PDF, try passing an instance of ChromeOptions() with the following profile properties while creating a Chrome() instance as shown:

profile = {
    'download.prompt_for_download': False,
    'download.default_directory': '/path/to/download/the/pdf',
    'download.directory_upgrade': True,
    'plugins.always_open_pdf_externally': True,
}
options = webdriver.ChromeOptions()
options.add_experimental_option('prefs', profile)
driver = webdriver.Chrome(options=options)

On a side-note, you can always use the requests module.

answered Aug 28, 2020 at 14:38

Sudipto Ghosh

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3 Comments

Victor Torres Over a year ago

THANK YOU! It worked - I had tried a bunch of different solutions that looked similar to what you gave me but they never worked. Thanks again!

Sudipto Ghosh Over a year ago

In that case, please mark it as a valid answer please :)

David Valenzuela Urrutia Over a year ago

Thank you! This param 'plugins.always_open_pdf_externally': True, solve my problem!

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