Downloading file to specified location with Selenium and python

Question

Ok so far I have my programing going to the website I want to download links from and selecting it, then the firefox dialogue box shows up and I don't know what to do. I want to save this file to a folder on my desktop. I am using this for a nightly build so I need this to work. Please help.

Here is my code that grabs the download link from the website:

driver = web driver.Firefox()

driver.implicitly_wait(5)

driver.get("Name of web site I'm grabbing from")

driver.find_element_by_xpath("//a[contains(text(), 'DEV.tgz')]".click()

Answer 1

You need to make Firefox save this explicit file type automatically.

This can be achieved by setting browser.helperApps.neverAsk.saveToDisk preference:

from selenium import webdriver

profile = webdriver.FirefoxProfile()

profile.set_preference("browser.download.folderList", 2)

profile.set_preference("browser.download.manager.showWhenStarting", False)

profile.set_preference("browser.download.dir", 'PATH TO DESKTOP')

profile.set_preference("browser.helperApps.neverAsk.saveToDisk", "application/x-gzip")

driver = webdriver.Firefox(firefox_profile=profile)

driver.get("Name of web site I'm grabbing from")

driver.find_element_by_xpath("//a[contains(text(), 'DEV.tgz')]").click()

More explanation:

browser.download.folderList tells it to not use default Downloads directory

browser.download.manager.showWhenStarting turns of showing download progress

browser.download.dir sets the directory for downloads

browser.helperApps.neverAsk.saveToDisk tells Firefox to automatically download the files of the chosen mime-types

You can read of these preferences at about: config within the browser.

There is additionally a really elaborated documentation page accessible here: About:config entries.

Besides, rather than using XPath approach, I'd use find_element_by_partial_link_text():

driver.find_element_by_partial_link_text("DEV.tgz").click()

Also, see:

Access to file download dialog in Firefox

Firefox + selenium WebDriver and download a CSV file automatically

If you wish to Learn Selenium visit this Selenium Certification.