I can't launch Chrome driver without specifying path

Question

I keep getting an error message as well as others in Selenium Python when I use

driver = webdriver.Firefox()
driver.get('http://stackoverflow.com')

Error message:

selenium.common.exceptions.WebDriverException: Message: 'geckodriver' executable needs to be in PATH or:
 selenium.common.exceptions.WebDriverException: Message: Unable to find a matching set of capabilities.

I keep getting this message as well as others in Selenium Python. I can get around this with:

driver = webdriver.Firefox(executable_path=r'C:\Users\Bain3\Music\geckodriver.exe')
driver.get(' http://stackoverflow.com' )

I have tried the following to remedy this issue with Chrome and Firefox: Reinstalling Chrome, Firefox, Pycharm, Anaconda, Selenium (pip install selenium)

Changing directory of file: https://ibb.co/huDuWk

This issue occurred after reinstalling Chrome and Firefox.
Directories are:

C:\Users\Bain3\Anaconda3
C:\Brother\geckodriver.exe
C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe 

I am using windows 10 Thanks

Answer 1

There are two ways to set the path

• Place the chromedriver.exe's path into PATH (on Windows computer ), so your PATH setting is correct, but you need to call the default constructor to use it .

  driver = webdriver.Chrome()

• Specify the path in webdriver.Chrome(executable_path='some path'). Here you need the full path to the executable, not the directory where you store the path .

  webdriver.Chrome(executable_path='C:\\Users\sankalp\\chromedriver.exe')

Choose either one you want.

Answer 2

First step would be to set the path MyCopmuter - > properties -> Environment Variables -> there set your path. Then the example code below:

    from selenium import webdriver        
    webdriver.Firefox(executable_path='C:\\Users\xyz\\chromedriver.exe')
    driver.get(' http://stackoverflow.com' )
    filename="stack_screen_shot"
    #to save in a file in output folder
    browser.save_screenshot("C:\\Users\\xyz\\PycharmProjects\\output\\"+file_name+".png")

Answer 3

Yes. You need to update the Path environment variable in windows. Just append the existing variable value with the folder path which actually consists your chrome/gecko drivers. This document may help you,

https://developers.thomsonreuters.com/sites/default/files/How%20To%20Add%20ChromeDriver%20To%20System%20Variables_0.pdf

Note - Although we can get rid of adding the executable_path by doing this,this is not preferable. Because in future it may create conflicts with the driver version that you are going to use. Instead of updating the path variable permanently, I suggest you to store the value of the executable_path in a variable and pass it in your scripts. In this way you can have a better control over the driver versions.

For storing the driver path in variable, below line may give you some idea.

geckoPath=r'C:\Users\Bain3\Music\geckodriver.exe'
driver = webdriver.Firefox(executable_path=geckoPath)
driver.get(' http://stackoverflow.com' )

Hope this helps. Thanks.