RSelenium: connecting to standalone-firefox container fails with `Empty reply from server`

Question

I am working with the R programming language.

I am trying to follow this tutorial here and learn about how to use Selenium: https://thatdatatho.com/tutorial-web-scraping-rselenium/

I first tried to get everything set up:

library(RSelenium)
library(tidyverse)

driver <- RSelenium::rsDriver(browser = "chrome",
                              chromever =
                                system2(command = "wmic",
                                        args = 'datafile where name="C:\\\\Program Files (x86)\\\\Google\\\\Chrome\\\\Application\\\\chrome.exe" get Version /value',
                                        stdout = TRUE,
                                        stderr = TRUE) %>%
                                stringr::str_extract(pattern = "(?<=Version=)\\d+\\.\\d+\\.\\d+\\.") %>%
                                magrittr::extract(!is.na(.)) %>%
                                stringr::str_replace_all(pattern = "\\.",
                                                         replacement = "\\\\.") %>%
                                paste0("^",  .) %>%
                                stringr::str_subset(string =
                                                      binman::list_versions(appname = "chromedriver") %>%
                                                      dplyr::last()) %>%
                                as.numeric_version() %>%
                                max() %>%
                                as.character())
remote_driver <- driver[["client"]] 
remote_driver$navigate("https://www.latlong.net/convert-address-to-lat-long.html")

But this game the following error:

[1] "Connecting to remote server"
Could not open chrome browser.
Client error message:
Undefined error in httr call. httr output: Failed to connect to localhost port 4567: Connection refused
Check server log for further details.
Warning message:
In RSelenium::rsDriver(browser = "chrome", chromever = system2(command = "wmic",  :
  Could not determine server status.

What I tried: I tried to troubleshoot this error by consulting different references (e.g. can't execute rsDriver (connection refused)) and tried a "Docker" based suggestion:

shell('docker pull selenium/standalone-firefox')
shell('docker run -d -p 4445:4444 selenium/standalone-firefox')
remDr <- remoteDriver(remoteServerAddr = "localhost", port = 4445L, browserName = "firefox")
remDr$open()
remDr$navigate("http://www.google.com/ncr")
remDr$getTitle()

But I get the following error:

> shell('docker pull selenium/standalone-firefox')
Using default tag: latest
latest: Pulling from selenium/standalone-firefox
Digest: sha256:b6d8279268b3183d0d33e667e82fec1824298902f77718764076de763673124f
Status: Image is up to date for selenium/standalone-firefox:latest
docker.io/selenium/standalone-firefox:latest

What's Next?
  View summary of image vulnerabilities and recommendations â†’ docker scout quickview selenium/standalone-firefox
> shell('docker run -d -p 4445:4444 selenium/standalone-firefox')
57c117ceca095eb96113804cb8db3c64c197499af26c387b96d141d7d5a445df
> remDr <- remoteDriver(remoteServerAddr = "localhost", port = 4445L, browserName = "firefox")
> remDr$open()
[1] "Connecting to remote server"
Error in checkError(res) : 
  Undefined error in httr call. httr output: Empty reply from server
> remDr$navigate("http://www.google.com/ncr")
Error in checkError(res) : 
  Undefined error in httr call. httr output: length(url) == 1 is not TRUE
> remDr$getTitle()
Error in checkError(res) : 
  Undefined error in httr call. httr output: length(url) == 1 is not TRUE

Can someone please suggest what to do from here? In general, is there some other way I can do this?

Thanks!

Notes:

Screenshots from Docker:

Here is the R Session

> sessionInfo()
    R version 4.1.3 (2022-03-10)
    Platform: x86_64-w64-mingw32/x64 (64-bit)
    Running under: Windows 10 x64 (build 22621)
    
    Matrix products: default
    
    locale:
    [1] LC_COLLATE=English_Canada.1252  LC_CTYPE=English_Canada.1252    LC_MONETARY=English_Canada.1252 LC_NUMERIC=C                    LC_TIME=English_Canada.1252    
    
    attached base packages:
    [1] stats     graphics  grDevices utils     datasets  methods   base     
    
    other attached packages:
    [1] dplyr_1.0.9

Additional References: How to set up rselenium for R?, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GnpJujF9dBw

RSelenium: connecting to standalone-firefox container fails with `Empty reply from server`

0 Answers0