Why wouldn't Selenium be able to load a firefox profile?

Question

The following code:

from selenium import webdriver
from selenium.common.exceptions import TimeoutException
from selenium.webdriver.support.ui import WebDriverWait # available since 2.4.0
from selenium.webdriver.support import expected_conditions as EC # available since 2.26.0
import os.path
import os
FIREFOX_PATH = os.path.join("C:", 
                            "FirefoxPortable", "FirefoxPortable.exe")
from selenium.webdriver.firefox.firefox_binary import FirefoxBinary
binary = FirefoxBinary(FIREFOX_PATH)
driver = webdriver.Firefox(firefox_binary=binary)

# go to the google home page
driver.get("http://www.google.com")

Fails with a complaint that the profile can't be loaded:

$ python test_selenium.py
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "test_selenium.py", line 17, in <module>
    driver = webdriver.Firefox(firefox_profile=profile,firefox_binary=binary)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/site-packages/selenium-2.45.0-py2.7.egg/selenium/webdriver/firefox/webdriver.py", line 59, in __init__
    self.binary, timeout),
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/site-packages/selenium-2.45.0-py2.7.egg/selenium/webdriver/firefox/extension_connection.py", line 47, in __init__
    self.binary.launch_browser(self.profile)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/site-packages/selenium-2.45.0-py2.7.egg/selenium/webdriver/firefox/firefox_binary.py", line 66, in launch_browser
    self._wait_until_connectable()
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/site-packages/selenium-2.45.0-py2.7.egg/selenium/webdriver/firefox/firefox_binary.py", line 105, in _wait_until_connectable
    raise WebDriverException("Can't load the profile. Profile "
selenium.common.exceptions.WebDriverException: Message: Can't load the profile. Profile Dir: %s If you specified a log_file in the FirefoxBinary constructor, check it for details.

Any thoughts what is going on?

I confess I care not a whit about profiles (and have only the vaguest sense what they are) - I just want a basic browser loaded so I can automate some web scraping.

Many thanks! /YGA

Can you please specify your OS and firefox version? – Helping Hands May 06 '15 at 03:58 — Helping Hands, May 06 '15 at 03:58

score 0 · Accepted Answer · edited May 23 '17 at 10:30

As per this question, specifying the path as below worked. This searches for the FirefoxPortable folder in D:/.

FIREFOX_PATH = os.path.join("D:/", "FirefoxPortable", "FirefoxPortable.exe")

Also, the below code is working fine. I removed the import os line as it was redundant.

from selenium import webdriver
from selenium.common.exceptions import TimeoutException
from selenium.webdriver.support.ui import WebDriverWait # available since 2.4.0
from selenium.webdriver.support import expected_conditions as EC # available since 2.26.0
import os.path

from selenium.webdriver.firefox.firefox_binary import FirefoxBinary

FIREFOX_PATH = os.path.join("D:/", "FirefoxPortable", "FirefoxPortable.exe")
binary = FirefoxBinary(FIREFOX_PATH)
driver = webdriver.Firefox(firefox_binary=binary)

# go to the google home page
driver.get("http://www.google.com")
driver.quit()

Why wouldn't Selenium be able to load a firefox profile?

1 Answers1