How to download a file at a specified location through python and selenium using Chrome driver

Question

I was automatically downloading links using selenium with chromed river and python. How can I select the download directory through the python program so that it does not get downloaded in the default Downloads directory? 

Answer 1

Create a profile for chrome and define the download location for the tests.

Below is an example:

from selenium import webdriver

options = webdriver.ChromeOptions() 

options.add_argument("download.default_directory=C:/Downloads")

driver = webdriver.Chrome(chrome_options=options)

Comments

HI Sir ,

in case of multiple files needs to be  downloaded to different downloading path how can we achieve in the same browser

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Hey @Shan, I'm not too confident about doing it that way. There is no use case for this scenario. 

From what I know, to change the default download location, you need to update the profile default settings by setting preferences. We use ChromeOptions in Chrome to update the preferences, in Firefox we use FirefoxProfile and for doing it in IE, we use DesiredCapabilities. 

The challenge however is, we cannot update the preferences during execution because it requires a restart of ChromeDriver instance. And if we restart ChromeDriver, our session will get terminated. Hence this is a no-show.

However, an alternative could be that, you set the download-to-path in the code itself. But i mist warn you, it will be extremely challenging to write the logic for the download path to change for every download. But its worth giving a short.

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Hey @shan were you able to achieve that through ChromeOptions?

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Can you advise how to do it with Edge selenium?

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As far as I know, IE does not use profiles. As such, there is no way to automatically download files to a specified location with Internet Explorer. Same with edge I guess.

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this is wrong......you need to add prefrences

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Hey, so is it possible in IE and edge then?