How can I open a website in my web browser using Python?

Actually it depends on what kind of uses. If you want to use it in a test-framework I highly recommend selenium-python. It is a great tool for testing automation related to web-browsers.

from selenium import webdriver

driver = webdriver.Firefox()
driver.get("http://www.python.org")

The webbrowser module looks promising: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jU3P7qz3ZrM

import webbrowser
webbrowser.open('http://google.co.kr', new=2)

As the instructions state, using the open() function does work, and opens the default web browser - usually I would say: "why wouldn't I want to use Firefox?!" (my default and favorite browser)

import webbrowser as wb
wb.open_new_tab('http://www.google.com')

The above should work for the computer's default browser. However, what if you want to to open in Google Chrome?

The proper way to do this is:

import webbrowser as wb
wb.get('chrome %s').open_new_tab('http://www.google.com')

To be honest, I'm not really sure that I know the difference between 'chrome' and 'google-chrome', but apparently there is some since they've made the two different type names in the webbrowser documentation.

However, doing this didn't work right off the bat for me. Every time, I would get the error:

Traceback (most recent call last):
File "C:\Python34\programs\a_temp_testing.py", line 3, in <module>
wb.get('google-chrome')
File "C:\Python34\lib\webbrowser.py", line 51, in get
raise Error("could not locate runnable browser")
webbrowser.Error: could not locate runnable browser

To solve this, I had to add the folder for chrome.exe to System PATH. My chrome.exe executable file is found at:

C:\Program Files (x86)\Google\Chrome\Application

You should check whether it is here or not for yourself.

To add this to your Environment Variables System PATH, right click on your Windows icon and go to System. System Control Panel applet (Start - Settings - Control Panel - System). Change advanced settings, or the advanced tab, and select the button there called Environment Varaibles.

Once you click on Environment Variables here, another window will pop up. Scroll through the items, select PATH, and click edit.

Once you're in here, click New to add the folder path to your chrome.exe file. Like I said above, mine was found at:

C:\Program Files (x86)\Google\Chrome\Application

Click save and exit out of there. Then make sure you reboot your computer.

Hope this helps!


From the doc.

The webbrowser module provides a high-level interface to allow displaying Web-based documents to users. Under most circumstances, simply calling the open() function from this module will do the right thing.

You have to import the module and use open() function. This will open https://nabinkhadka.com.np in the browser.

To open in new tab:

import webbrowser
webbrowser.open('https://nabinkhadka.com.np', new = 2)

Also from the doc.

If new is 0, the url is opened in the same browser window if possible. If new is 1, a new browser window is opened if possible. If new is 2, a new browser page (“tab”) is opened if possible

So according to the value of new, you can either open page in same browser window or in new tab etc.

Also you can specify as which browser (chrome, firebox, etc.) to open. Use get() function for this.

Tags:

Python