Using Selenium headless browser for web scraping in a GUI-less environment

Other Questions Headless Browser
1

I’m working on a Python project to scrape data from Facebook Marketplace using Selenium and a headless browser. I’m testing it in a no-GUI environment (Ubuntu 22.04 subsystem in Windows, terminal only).

I ran into a problem when trying to run my script. The Selenium docs say you don’t need the actual browser installed, just the driver. But when I tried to run it, I got an error saying Chrome isn’t installed.

This seems to go against what the docs say. Has anyone else run into this? How can I get my scraper to work without having to install the full browser on my machine? I thought the whole point of headless browsing was to avoid needing the GUI stuff.

Any tips on how to resolve this would be super helpful. I’m a bit stuck and not sure what I’m missing here. Thanks!

2

While the Selenium docs suggest you only need the driver, in practice, a minimal Chrome installation is often required even for headless operation. This is especially true in headless environments like WSL.

One workaround is to use a different WebDriver, such as Firefox’s geckodriver with a headless Firefox setup. This tends to be more forgiving in GUI-less environments.

Alternatively, you could try using a containerized solution like Docker. This allows you to package Chrome and the necessary dependencies in a container, ensuring consistency across different environments.

If you’re set on using Chrome, you might need to install a minimal version of Chrome in your WSL environment. There are scripts available that can help automate this process.

Remember to keep your WebDriver and browser versions in sync to avoid compatibility issues.

3

hey there, i’ve run into similar issues b4. have u tried using phantomjs instead? it’s designed for headless browsing and might work better in ur setup. Also, make sure ur chromedriver version matches the chrome version ur script expects. that can cause weird errors too. good luck with ur project!

4

I’ve been down this road before, and it can definitely be frustrating. In my experience, even for headless operation, you typically need some core Chrome components installed. It’s not the full browser, but certain libraries are required.

What worked for me was using the chromium-browser package in Ubuntu. It’s a lightweight version that satisfies the dependencies without installing the full GUI Chrome. You can install it with:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install chromium-browser

After that, make sure your chromedriver version matches the installed Chromium version. You might need to download a specific chromedriver version from the official site.

Also, double-check your Selenium code. Ensure you’re properly setting up the headless options. Something like:

from selenium.webdriver.chrome.options import Options
chrome_options = Options()
chrome_options.add_argument('--headless')
chrome_options.add_argument('--no-sandbox')
driver = webdriver.Chrome(options=chrome_options)

This approach has worked reliably for me in similar setups. Hope it helps!