selenium - Auto download PDF in Firefox

Question

I want Firefox to directly download the PDF files instead of showing them in browser. I used following settings

FirefoxProfile firefoxProfile = new FirefoxProfile();
firefoxProfile.setPreference("browser.download.folderList", 2);
firefoxProfile.setPreference("browser.download.manager.showWhenStarting", false);
firefoxProfile.setPreference("browser.download.dir", "c:\tmp");
firefoxProfile.setPreference("browser.helperApps.neverAsk.saveToDisk", "application/pdf");
WebDriver driver = new FirefoxDriver(firefoxProfile);
// Its just a sample URL 
driver.get("http://www.energy.umich.edu/sites/default/files/pdf-sample.pdf");

On about:config page I can see that this setting are successfully reflected also the response type is application/pdf.

When Webdriver launches Firefox I can see following option.

It should be "Save File".

Still Firefox is showing PDF in browser. I am using Firefox 29.0.1, does the preference values have changed?

Answer 1

It doesn't make sense to me that your screenshot shows Firefox will preview pdf files, but your Firefox still pops up "Save as" dialog.

Anyway, in order to make Firefox saving pdf files to a pre-defined folder as the default behaviour, you might want to try the following code, where setting pdfjs.disabled to true will prevent Firefox previewing the files.

Also, please ensure you don't have any third party Firefox PDF viewing plugins installed. If you have Adobe Reader installed on your computer, then it sets Acrobat as the PDF viewer inside Firefox. Similarly, I used to have Sumatra PDF Firefox plugin on my computer, it overrides Firefox settings to preview PDFs no matter what's in about:config.

FirefoxProfile firefoxProfile = new FirefoxProfile();

firefoxProfile.setPreference("browser.download.folderList", 2);
firefoxProfile.setPreference("browser.download.manager.showWhenStarting", false);
firefoxProfile.setPreference("browser.download.dir", "c:\tmp");
firefoxProfile.setPreference("browser.helperApps.neverAsk.saveToDisk", "application/pdf");

firefoxProfile.setPreference("pdfjs.disabled", true);

// Use this to disable Acrobat plugin for previewing PDFs in Firefox (if you have Adobe reader installed on your computer)
firefoxProfile.setPreference("plugin.scan.Acrobat", "99.0");
firefoxProfile.setPreference("plugin.scan.plid.all", false);

WebDriver driver = new FirefoxDriver(firefoxProfile);

// Its just a sample URL 
driver.get("http://www.energy.umich.edu/sites/default/files/pdf-sample.pdf");

Further reading:

• Similar question I answered before: Custom browser preferences for file download for PDF file
• Article about Plugin Scanning in Firefox: Plugin scanning
• Download PDF files automatically in Firefox using Selenium WebDriver