Getting stuck executing infinite javascript loop in Python's Selenium chromedriver

Question

I am trying to build a service where users can insert their Javascript code and it gets executed on a website of their choice. I use webdriver from python's selenium lib and chromedriver. The problem is that the python script gets stuck if user submits Javascript code with infinite loop.

The python script needs to process many tasks like: go to a website and execute some Javascript code. So, I can't afford to let it get stuck. Infinite loop in Javascript is known to cause a browser to freeze. But isn't there some way to set a timeout for webdriver's execute_script method? I would like to get back to python after a timeout and continue to run code after the execute_script command. Is this possible?

from selenium import webdriver
chromedriver = "C:\chromedriver\chromedriver.exe"
driver = webdriver.Chrome(chromedriver)
driver.get("http://www.bulletproofpasswords.org/") # Or any other website
driver.execute_script("while (1); // Javascript infinite loop causing freeze")

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Jan 06 '19 at 22:47

You could set a timeout for your driver.execute_script("while (1);") call. I have found another post that could solve this issue.

Basically, if you are on a Unix system, you could use signal to set a timeout for your driver.execute_script("while (1); call.

Or if you could run it in a separate process and then end the process if it takes too long using multiprocessing.Process. I'm including the example that was given in the other post:

import multiprocessing
import time

# bar
def bar():
    for i in range(100):
        print "Tick"
        time.sleep(1)

if __name__ == '__main__':
    # Start bar as a process
    p = multiprocessing.Process(target=bar)
    p.start()

    # Wait for 10 seconds or until process finishes
    p.join(10)

    # If thread is still active
    if p.is_alive():
        print "running... let's kill it..."

        # Terminate
        p.terminate()
        p.join()

Getting stuck executing infinite javascript loop in Python's Selenium chromedriver

1 Answers1