How to access the chromdriver executable binary from a network location without storing it in each host using Selenium on Windows OS

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To access the ChromeDriver executable binary from a network location without storing it on each host while using Selenium on Windows OS, you can follow these steps:

  1. Set up a shared network location: Choose a network location accessible by all the hosts that will run your Selenium scripts. This location could be a shared folder on a file server or a network-attached storage (NAS) device.

  2. Store the ChromeDriver executable on the network location: Place the ChromeDriver executable binary file in the shared network location you set up in step 1. Ensure that the file is accessible and readable by all the hosts that will execute the Selenium scripts.

  3. Use the ChromeDriverService class: In your Selenium script, instead of specifying the local path to the ChromeDriver executable, you can use the ChromeDriverService class to start the ChromeDriver process dynamically. The ChromeDriverService allows you to set the executable path dynamically at runtime.

Here's an example code snippet:

python
from selenium import webdriver

from selenium.webdriver.chrome.service import Service



# Specify the network path to the ChromeDriver executable

chrome_driver_path = r'\\network\path\to\chromedriver.exe'



# Set up the ChromeDriverService

chrome_service = Service(chrome_driver_path)



# Configure the desired options

chrome_options = webdriver.ChromeOptions()

# ...



# Start the ChromeDriver with the service and options

driver = webdriver.Chrome(service=chrome_service, options=chrome_options)



# Use the ChromeDriver for your Selenium automation

# ...



# Quit the driver when done

driver.quit()

In the code above, you need to update the chrome_driver_path variable with the network path to the ChromeDriver executable on your shared network location. The r prefix before the path string denotes a raw string, which is useful when dealing with Windows file paths.

By using this approach, you can run your Selenium scripts on multiple hosts without storing the ChromeDriver executable on each individual machine. Each host will dynamically access the ChromeDriver binary from the shared network location.

Ensure that the network location and the shared ChromeDriver executable are accessible and properly configured on all the hosts running the Selenium scripts.