Selenium working with Chrome, but not headless Chrome

Question

I've developed a couple of Python scripts using Selenium and, at first, PhantomJS. While heading toward automated downloads, I switched for (headed) Firefox (which worked) and then Chrome with the headless option so I won't have the browser opening in front of me.

My first script, which accesses a page and a couple of HTML elements, works perfectly with headless Chrome.

The second one, however, works only with headed Chrome. If I add the "headless" option, it doesn't work anymore. When I try to print the HTML in headless mode to see why it cannot find the HTML element I'm looking for, all I have is :

<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><head></head><body></body></html>

With the headed Chrome, I have a complete HTML printed. This is how I start my headless Chrome :

options = webdriver.ChromeOptions()
options.add_argument("--ignore-certificate-errors") 
options.add_argument("headless") 
driver = webdriver.Chrome(chrome_options=options)

Again, note that this works in another of my script. The only difference here is that I need to log in to access the page, but even then, why would it work with the head? My script is made to log in automatically anyway by filling the form.

Python : 3.6.1, Chrome : 60.0.3112.78 (64 bits), Selenium : 3.4.3

Any idea? Thanks.

** EDIT: Here is the beginning of the code**

url = 'https://10.11.227.21/tmui/'
driver.get(url + "login.jsp")

html_source = driver.page_source
print(html_source)

blocStatus = WebDriverWait(driver, TIMEOUT).until(EC.presence_of_element_located((By.ID, "username")))
inputElement = driver.find_element_by_id("username")
inputElement.send_keys('actualLogin')
inputElement = driver.find_element_by_id("passwd")
inputElement.send_keys('actualPassword')
inputElement.submit()

Can you show us your code block which you are trying to use as non-headed? Thanks — undetected Selenium, Jul 28 '17 at 09:57
You want us to access an URL of Class A (10.11.227.21) Address? Thanks — undetected Selenium, Jul 28 '17 at 10:16
-_- sorry about that, we are using a VPN that's why I forgot about it. So yeah basically I have no way to give it to you. — Gnougnou, Jul 28 '17 at 10:21
The issue could be due to the size of the window which is only 800x600 by default with the headless flag. Try to set the size flag: `--window-size=1280,800` — Florent B., Jul 28 '17 at 10:50
Thanks for your answers. I tried, but it still doesn't work. — Gnougnou, Jul 28 '17 at 11:26
Did the crawled page check `User-Agent`? `Chrome/57.0.2987.133 Safari/537.36` VS `HeadlessChrome Safari/537.36`. Webserver could check that and refuse non-human header agent. — Arount, Jul 28 '17 at 12:15
That's a really smart idea. I printed my user agent using driver.execute_script("return navigator.userAgent") and the result is "Chrome/60.0.3112.78 Safari/537.36" Does it help somehow ? It's exactly the same thing that is printed if I start with the header. — Gnougnou, Jul 28 '17 at 12:47
Any other idea ? I really don't understand why it's not working without the head. It doesn't make any sense to me. — Gnougnou, Jul 31 '17 at 06:36
@Gnougnou -- I'm curious if you've found a fix. I have exactly the same issue. — Captain Midday, Aug 08 '17 at 05:44

score 10 · Accepted Answer · answered Aug 26 '17 at 12:27

I had a same experience like you, and solved it by using xvfb and pyvirtualdisplay.

I use chromedrive=v2.3.1, chrome-browser=v60 and Selenium=3.4.3

In Headless chrome, some of script seems not to work as expected.

Please refer to vpassapera's comment in https://gist.github.com/addyosmani/5336747.

How about try it like below,

from pyvirtualdisplay import Display

display = Display(visible=0, size=(800, 600))
display.start()

# Do Not use headless chrome option
# options.add_argument('headless')

url = 'https://10.11.227.21/tmui/'
driver.get(url + "login.jsp")

html_source = driver.page_source
print(html_source)

blocStatus = WebDriverWait(driver,    TIMEOUT).until(EC.presence_of_element_located((By.ID, "username")))
inputElement = driver.find_element_by_id("username")
inputElement.send_keys('actualLogin')
inputElement = driver.find_element_by_id("passwd")
inputElement.send_keys('actualPassword')
inputElement.submit()

display.stop()

xvfb is required to use "pyvortualdisplay"

$ sudo apt-get install -y xvfb

I tried this but instead of html of the page it shows html of chrome official site.. why is that? — Volatil3, Aug 07 '18 at 05:52
It's worth mentioning that this solution is only for *nix based OS — Mache, Nov 05 '20 at 10:22

Suraj Regmi · Answer 2 · 2018-08-14T14:22:12.127

Headless Chrome does not support insecure certificates and hence, websites with insecure certificates does not open living it blank. You need to add capabilities as follow:

from selenium import webdriver
from selenium.webdriver import DesiredCapabilities
from selenium.webdriver.chrome.options import Options

chrome_options = Options()
chrome_options.add_argument("--headless")

capabilities = DesiredCapabilities.CHROME.copy()
capabilities['acceptSslCerts'] = True 
capabilities['acceptInsecureCerts'] = True

driver = webdriver.Chrome(chrome_options = chrome_options,executable_path='your path',desired_capabilities=capabilities)
driver.get("yourWebsite")

This will do the work.

It should also be noted if your local server doesn't redirect to https traffic to http make sure you're using the correct URL. — Cynic, Aug 08 '19 at 20:06

score 3 · Answer 3 · answered Mar 25 '20 at 10:47

I had the same issue and setting the window size in conftest.py solved it. My code snippet:

@pytest.fixture
def chrome_options(chrome_options, pytestconfig):
    if pytestconfig.getoption('headless'):
        chrome_options.add_argument('--headless')
        chrome_options.add_argument("window-size=1920,1080")
    else:
        chrome_options.add_argument("start-maximized");
    return chrome_options

score 1 · Answer 4 · answered Aug 06 '17 at 12:22

1

Headless chrome may be faster on same machine than headed, try adding some wait before locating password element.

answered Aug 06 '17 at 12:22

mmichalik

64
1
6

score 0 · Answer 5 · answered Apr 22 '20 at 22:08

0

For some if you remove the below, it would work.

driver.fullscreen_window()

answered Apr 22 '20 at 22:08

HelloWorld123

79
2
9

score 0 · Answer 6 · answered Sep 02 '20 at 11:15

refer https://github.com/SeleniumHQ/selenium/issues/4477 add below code

self.chrome_options = webdriver.ChromeOptions()
self.chrome_options.add_argument("--window-size=1920,1080")
self.chrome_options.add_argument("--disable-extensions")
self.chrome_options.add_argument("--proxy-server='direct://'")
self.chrome_options.add_argument("--proxy-bypass-list=*")
self.chrome_options.add_argument("--start-maximized")
self.chrome_options.add_argument('--headless')
self.chrome_options.add_argument('--disable-gpu')
self.chrome_options.add_argument('--disable-dev-shm-usage')
self.chrome_options.add_argument('--no-sandbox')
self.chrome_options.add_argument('--ignore-certificate-errors')
self.browser = webdriver.Chrome(options=self.chrome_options)

As commented at the link you've provided, it's best for you to explain what these options do before suggesting them — incarnadine, Sep 02 '20 at 11:48

score 0 · Answer 7 · answered Nov 13 '21 at 08:18

For my situation, headless did not work because I was behind a proxy. Apparently, Chrome is able to use the system proxy, but headless does not use the system proxy.

I simply needed to provide the proxy, then headless (as well as Chrome) worked.

options.add_argument('--proxy-server=http://myproxy:port')

Selenium working with Chrome, but not headless Chrome

7 Answers7

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