August 09, 2013

Setting up Selenium Python environment with X virtual framebuffer on Ubuntu server

  1. Install relevant APT packages:

    $ sudo apt-get install xorg
$ sudo apt-get install xfvd
$ sudo apt-get install firefox
$ sudo apt-get install openjdk-7-jre
$ sudo apt-get install python-pip

  2. Download Selenium server and Python bindings:

    $ sudo pip install selenium
$ wget https://selenium.googlecode.com/files/selenium-server-standalone-2.34.0.jar

  3. Start virtual framebuffer X server for server number 1 (for DISPLAY) in the background:

    $ sudo Xvfb :1 &
$ sudo Xvfb :1 -screen 0 1280x1024x8

  4. Start Selenium server in the background (without sudo):

    $ java -jar selenium-server-standalone-2.34.0.jar &

  5. Write sample Python code in sample.py:

    from selenium import webdriver
from selenium.webdriver.common.keys import Keys


driver = webdriver.Firefox()
driver.get("http://www.python.org")
assert "Python" in driver.title
elem = driver.find_element_by_name("q")
elem.send_keys("selenium")
elem.send_keys(Keys.RETURN)
assert "Google" in driver.title
driver.close()

  6. Run sample.py with environment variable DISPLAY=:1:

    $ DISPLAY=:1 python sample.py
Posted by Shichao An
Tags: Python, Ubuntu