Console app with python + selenium simulate google search

Question

I try to write a console application that simulates Google search. But trivial even I can not run almost empty code, just because of the webdriver import the console immediately closes

# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-


import os

from selenium import webdriver
from selenium.webdriver.common.keys import Keys


def greeting():
    os.system('cls' if os.name == 'nt' else 'clear')
    print('Hello')


def search():
    greeting()
    q = ''

    while q != 'quit':
        q = input()
        q = q.replace(' ', '')
        browser = webdriver.Firefox()
        body = browser.find_elements_by_tag_name("body")
        body.send_keys(Keys.CONTROL + 't')
        counter = 0
        for i in range(0, 20):
            browser.get("https://www.google.com/search?q=" + q + "&start=" + str(counter))
            body = browser.find_element_by_tag_name("body")
            print(body)
            counter += 10
            browser.quit()
        print(q)


if __name__ == '__main__':
    search()

Thank you!

Answer 1

There are a couple of issues with your code.

The following lines:

body = browser.find_elements_by_tag_name("body")
body.send_keys(Keys.CONTROL + 't')

will not work because you are getting a list of elements (mind the s at the end of find_elements) and send_keys will only work on a single element, also, send_keys only works with visible elements so you cannot use the body tag.

If I comment out the problematic lines I am able to run your code but since your are calling browser.quit() within your for loop, it will stop working after the first iteration.

Once removed, everything runs fine:

for i in range(0, 20):
    browser.get("https://www.google.com/search?q=" + q + "&start=" + str(counter))
    body = browser.find_element_by_tag_name("body")
    print(body)
    counter+=10