selenium - hide chromeDriver console in python

Question

I'm using chrome driver in Selenium to open chrome , log into a router, press some buttons ,upload configuration etc. all code is written in Python.

here is the part of the code to obtain the driver:

chrome_options = webdriver.ChromeOptions()
prefs = {"download.default_directory":  self.user_local}
chrome_options.add_experimental_option("prefs", prefs)
chrome_options.experimental_options.
driver = webdriver.Chrome("chromedriver.exe", chrome_options=chrome_options)
driver.set_window_position(0, 0)
driver.set_window_size(0, 0)

return driver

when i fire up my app, i get a chromedriver.exe console (a black window) followed by a chrome window opened and all my requests are done.

My question: is there a way in python to hide the console window ?

(as you can see i'm also re-sizing the chrome window ,my preference would be doing things in a way the user wont notice anything happening on screen)

thanks Sivan

Answer 1

You will have to edit Selenium Source code to achieve this. I am a noob too, and I dont fully understand the overall consequences of editing source code but here is what I did to achieve hiding the webdriver console window on Windows 7, Python 2.7.

Locate and edit this file as follows: located at Libsite-packagesseleniumwebdrivercommonservice.py in your Python folder.

Edit the Start() function by adding the creation flags this way: creationflags=CREATE_NO_WINDOW

The edited method will be as below:

def start(self):
    """
    Starts the Service.

    :Exceptions:
     - WebDriverException : Raised either when it can't start the service
       or when it can't connect to the service
    """
    try:
        cmd = [self.path]
        cmd.extend(self.command_line_args())
        self.process = subprocess.Popen(cmd, env=self.env,
                                        close_fds=platform.system() != 'Windows',
                                        stdout=self.log_file, stderr=self.log_file, creationflags=CREATE_NO_WINDOW)
    except TypeError:
        raise

You will have to add the relevant imports:

from win32process import CREATE_NO_WINDOW

This should also work for Chrome webdriver as they import the same file to start the webdriver process.