Python webbrowser - Check if browser is available (nothing happens when opening webpage over an SSH connection)

Question

Is there a way to detect whether there is a browser available on the system on which the script is run? Nothing happens when running the following code on a server:

try:
    webbrowser.open("file://" + os.path.realpath(path))
except webbrowser.Error:
    print "Something went wrong when opening webbrowser"

It's weird that there's no caught exception, and no open browser. I'm running the script from command line over an SSH-connection, and I'm not very proficient in server-related stuff, so there may be another way of detecting this that I am missing.

Thanks!

Answer 1

Checkout the documentation:

webbrowser.get([name])

Return a controller object for the browser type name. If name is empty, return a controller for a default browser appropriate to the caller’s environment.

This works for me:

try:
    # we are not really interested in the return value
    webbrowser.get()
    webbrowser.open("file://" + os.path.realpath(path))
except Exception as e:
    print "Webbrowser error: " % e

Output:

Webbrowser error: could not locate runnable browser