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linuxshellgoogle-chrome

Easier way to download chrome driver

I have a set of tests that downloads the latest Google Chrome from https://dl.google.com/linux/direct/google-chrome-stable_current_amd64.deb and then parses the contents on https://chromedriver.chromium.org/downloads to figure out the right chrome driver version to download. The Chrome version eg: 102.0.5005.115, does not always match the chrome driver version, eg: 102.0.5005.61.

Currently, I parse the contents of https://chromedriver.chromium.org/downloads and try to figure out the right version. This is brittle as the HTML contents may change.

#!/bin/sh
GOOGLE_CHROME_VERSION="$(google-chrome --version | cut -f 3 -d ' ')"

# https://www.chromium.org/developers/version-numbers/
GOOGLE_CHROME_VERSION_MAJOR=$(echo "${GOOGLE_CHROME_VERSION}" | cut -f 1 -d'.')
echo "GOOGLE_CHROME_VERSION_MAJOR => [${GOOGLE_CHROME_VERSION_MAJOR}]"

# https://chromedriver.chromium.org/downloads
GOOGLE_CHROME_DRIVER_LINE=$(curl https://chromedriver.chromium.org/downloads | grep "If you are using Chrome version ${GOOGLE_CHROME_VERSION_MAJOR}," | head -1)
GOOGLE_CHROME_DRIVER_VERSION=$(echo "${GOOGLE_CHROME_DRIVER_LINE}" | rev | cut -f 1 -d' ' | rev)

echo "GOOGLE_CHROME_DRIVER_VERSION => [${GOOGLE_CHROME_DRIVER_VERSION}]"
wget https://chromedriver.storage.googleapis.com/${GOOGLE_CHROME_DRIVER_VERSION}/chromedriver_linux64.zip
unzip chromedriver_linux64.zip
rm chromedriver_linux64.zip
chmod a+x chromedriver
mv chromedriver /usr/local/bin

Is there a simpler way to download a chrome driver for a specific version of google chrome?

Solution

  • https://chromedriver.chromium.org/downloads/version-selection

    I hope this helps. Apparently, it supports some automated URL resolving:

    First, find out which version of Chrome you are using. Let's say you have Chrome 72.0.3626.81.

Take the Chrome version number, remove the last part, and append the result to URL "https://chromedriver.storage.googleapis.com/LATEST_RELEASE_". For example, with Chrome version 72.0.3626.81, you'd get a URL "https://chromedriver.storage.googleapis.com/LATEST_RELEASE_72.0.3626".

Use the URL created in the last step to retrieve a small file containing the version of ChromeDriver to use. For example, the above URL will get your a file containing "72.0.3626.69". (The actual number may change in the future, of course.)

Use the version number retrieved from the previous step to construct the URL to download ChromeDriver. With version 72.0.3626.69, the URL would be "https://chromedriver.storage.googleapis.com/index.html?path=72.0.3626.69/".

After the initial download, it is recommended that you occasionally go through the above process again to see if there are any bug fix releases.