How to specify a Firefox profile name when using webdriver + Python

Question

I'm using python 2.7.1 and selenium 2.20.0.

I have a separate Firefox profile called "selenium" which I want to use when running the webdriver.

I managed to do it by specifying the complete path to the profile as shown below, but that's not very portable code.

profile = FirefoxProfile("/Users/username/Library/Application Support/Firefox/Profiles/jtokyple.selenium")
self.driver = webdriver.Firefox(profile)

Is there any better way to specify the profile?

• William Hruska: I do not have that much idea. Thank you for sharing this question.

Answer 1

If you want it to be portable, you need to have the firefox profile included in your build and copied to the working directory. You should be able to reference it from there easily. This will work even if you copy all of your tests to a different machine and execute them there.

Answer 2

I've been using the following as a constant:

FF_PROFILE_PATH = os.path.join(os.environ['APPDATA'],
 'Mozilla', 'Firefox', 'Profiles')

I believe it's consistent across OSes per Mozilla support documentation. To locate the correct profile, you can iterate through the list created by os.listdir to find the profile, as such:

try:
 profiles = os.listdir(FF_PROFILE_PATH)
except WindowsError:
 print "Could not find profiles directory."
 sys.exit(1)
try:
 loc = (folder for folder in profiles
 if folder.endswith(profile)).next()
except StopIteration:
 print "Firefox profile not found."
 sys.exit(1)
return os.path.join(FF_PROFILE_PATH, loc)

Answer 3

Using WebDriver you can add any addons and change any configurations you want from the programming code. It's not required to create separate firefox profile

• Leonid: Great, so suppose I want to have a setting where files get downloaded automatically without a popup to a particular directory. I can set it manually in Firefox and it works for my user, but not when Selenium is driving it. How can I change this in code?

Answer 4

Base on Liam Kirsh answer I prepared full working code for Windows (in my case Windows 10 and Python 3.4):

import os
import sys
from selenium import webdriver
def get_profile_path(profile):
 FF_PROFILE_PATH = os.path.join(os.environ['APPDATA'],'Mozilla', 'Firefox', 'Profiles')
 try:
 profiles = os.listdir(FF_PROFILE_PATH)
 except WindowsError:
 print("Could not find profiles directory.")
 sys.exit(1)
 try:
 for folder in profiles:
 print(folder)
 if folder.endswith(profile):
 loc = folder
 except StopIteration:
 print("Firefox profile not found.")
 sys.exit(1)
 return os.path.join(FF_PROFILE_PATH, loc)
profile = get_profile_path("default")
print(profile)
driver = webdriver.Firefox(firefox_profile=profile)

Answer 5

I think, I rushed and just added code. Tested Ok below code with Selenium 2.4, python 2.7 Linux OS: mint17 Debian base.

# for fresh FF profile
#profile = webdriver.FirefoxProfile() 
profile = webdriver.FirefoxProfile("./firefox_profiles/selenium")
profile = webdriver.FirefoxProfile(profile_path)
driver = webdriver.Firefox(firefox_profile=profile)
driver.get("http://whatismyip.com")

I feel, it's good idea to have absolute path. In fact, put it in conf file so you can use it for various deployment instances and OSes. Relative path have to start from location where you have selenium .py file. It should work in same way on Windows. NOT tested on windows.

• Edu: Your answer doesn't actually solve the problem stated in the question. You skipped the part of how to specify a relative profile path, which is what was asked. Additionally your answer would be better if you would include some explanation with your code.
• m3nda: profile = webdriver.FirefoxProfile(profile_path) The profile_path variable is not defined in any part of that code. Do not add that line if there's no variable, this makes code not understable and not runnable at all. It should be commented like the other line...

Answer 6

for my, this is correct:

from selenium import webdriver
profile = webdriver.FirefoxProfile('/home/user-name-pc/.mozilla/firefox/1kj45idd.default')
driver = webdriver.Firefox(executable_path=your_path_selenium, firefox_profile=profile)
driver.get('https://hello.com')