Unable to run Chrome selenium " unknown error: cannot process extension #1"

Question

I'm trying to run a chrome selenium driver and add an extention:

manifest_json = """..... """
background_js = """...."""
ext_file = 'my_extention.zip'
with zipfile.ZipFile(ext_file, 'w') as zp:
    zp.writestr("manifest.json", manifest_json)
    zp.writestr("background.js", background_js)

co = webdriver.ChromeOptions()
co.add_extension(ext_file)
d = webdriver.Chrome(chrome_options=co)

That throws an error:

raise exception_class(message, screen, stacktrace)
selenium.common.exceptions.WebDriverException: Message: unknown error: cannot process extension #1
from unknown error: invalid public key length
  (Driver info: chromedriver=2.9.248304,platform=Linux 3.19.0-39-generic x86_64)

score 3 · Answer 1 · answered Sep 30 '16 at 15:48

3

I stumble on that issue when I was trying to base64 encode a .crx in order to have the extension running on selenium (that was in the context of protractor tests).

I suspect this is due to the extension not being empacted with the same browser than the one trying to run it.

Anyway I end up giving-up and just I just added an option to chromium to load the un-empacted extension:

--load-extension=path_to_the_extension_folder

I hope it helps.

answered Sep 30 '16 at 15:48

dekajoo

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This error happened to me when I moved my *.zip chrome extensions from one machine to another. I ended up with your solution; --load-extension, which is much nicer anyways. – Erti-Chris Eelmaa Oct 12 '16 at 13:46
can you please tell me where you added this option? – Abdul Haseeb May 02 '21 at 09:08
if you run chrome/chromium using a command line it'll be `./chrome.exe --load-extension=path_to_the_extension_folder` – dekajoo May 08 '21 at 15:45

Unable to run Chrome selenium " unknown error: cannot process extension #1"

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