teaches this Selenium course. He has created many  popular courses both on the freeCodeCamp channel  

and his own channel. Hi, everyone, and  welcome to the Python Selenium series,  

where we will learn how to create user interface  automation for websites. So Selenium is widely  

used. And it is very popular for a great reason.  Because it can help you to create tests for your  

web applications. And it can also help you  to create online bots, which is very nice.  

So in this series, we are going to learn how to  use Selenium from the basics. And later on, we  

will learn how to create an online bot that will  report the cheapest deals from a booking website.  

And this series is really going to include some  great episodes, so be sure to hit the subscribe  

button and as well as click the bell notification.  So you will never miss an episode from this entire  

series. So grab a cup of coffee, and let's get  started. Great. So before we really get started,  

we need to understand that there are going to  be some prerequisites. So in this series, I'm  

going to assume that you have Python installed.  And as well as you got an id like Python that  

is configured properly with Python. Now you can  also use a random text editor like Sublime Text,  

but just make sure that it is connected  properly to your system interpreter.  

And if you don't have any of those, then you can  visit my five our beginners course and catch up  

with the installations. Alright, so like a lot  of libraries in the Python programming language,  

we need to somehow use the library of scillonian.  So that's why we need to somehow install it on our  

computer. And we can do that with the PIP  command. Now, if you got Python installed,  

then you should also have the PIP package manager  installed together with it. So now I'm going to  

open our terminal here. And I'm going to say pip  install Selenium like that. Now I'm doing this in  

the system interpreter, because I'm not going to  use virtual environments throughout the series.  

So that's why I could allow myself to do that  from the terminal. Okay, so if you see no arrows,  

then it means that everything is great. And we can  go back to a pie chart and basically import this  

library and see how we can use it. Alright,  so here, I'm going to import from Selenium  

import WebDriver. So I'm importing something very  specifically inside the Selenium library. And  

there's a great reason for doing that. Now, when  it comes to performing user interface automation  

in web browsers, then we need to somehow open up  that web browser. So that's why we need to import  

a dedicated library that is going to automate  us the action of opening up a web browser. Now  

when we talk about performing automations on a web  browser, we need to understand that for each web  

browser out there, there is going to be a version  that is going to be dedicated for performing those  

automated tasks. So for example, if we want to  perform those automation tasks on Chrome browser,  

then we need to instantiate the chrome driver  class to perform those automated actions in it.  

So that's why we need to import that library.  Alright, so now that we have imported this,  

then we have to instantiate the library that  is going to be responsible to pop up the  

Chrome browser to us. So that's why I'm going  to go down. And I'm going to say, for example,  

driver is equal to WebDriver dot Chrome, like  that. And as you can see here, there is actually  

more options rather than Chrome. So if I delete  that, and I press on control space, then you can  

see that we also got Firefox. And I believe that  there is edge as expected. So as you can see, you  

can perform those automated actions in different  browsers. But actually, throughout this series,  

I'm going to use Chrome browser. So that's why I  will say Chrome, and we'll instantiate the class  

like that. Now, we could go ahead and try to  execute this. But we will receive some arrows and  

the arrows are going to talk about something that  is called chromedriver. That does not exist on  

my computer. And as well as it is not in the tat.  So let's break down this error into two important  

steps that we need to do. So first of them, we  need to download the chrome driver. And actually  

chrome driver is a separated executable file that  Selenium WebDriver uses to perform those automated  

actions in a Chrome browser. So that means that we  need to download this chrome driver dot e xe file  

to our computer. So that's why I'm going to bring  here this website. And I will put the link of that  

in the description for sure. And as you can see,  here is the page that we can download the chrome  

driver, and if we scroll down, then you can see  that there are a lot of versions of Chrome driver  

that you can download. Now, you might ask yourself  how I'm going to decide which version should be  

installed on my computer? Well, this depends  on what Chrome browser version you have right  

now installed on your computer. So if you  use the Chrome browser by default, like me,  

then what we can do is basically go to a separate  tab, and we can right here, Chrome, colon,  

two forward slashes, and then say, version.  And right after that, we will see an output  

like the following. And as you can see from  here, here is the google chrome version that I  

use. And as you can see, we have the major version  as 89. So for yourself, it could be 9091 92,  

or even 84. But you need to make sure that  this measure version is going to be matched  

to the version that you are going to download from  the chromedriver page. So in my case, I am going  

to go back now to that page. And I'm going to  search up for a version that is starting with 89.  

And that's why I'm going to click here. And right  after that, I'm going to search for the specific  

archive that I need. And for sure it is going to  be windows because that is the operating system  

of my machine. And I'm going to click here and  it should start downloading and right after we  

have this downloaded, then we need to extract it  because it is actually a zip archive. Alright, so  

as you probably know, in Windows, by default, the  download files are going to be downloaded in the  

download library. And you want to move this to a  location that you want to have your chromedriver.  

So for myself, it is going to be under the C  drive. And inside the folder that I named salonu  

drivers, as you can see in the left side of my  screen. So I'm going to cut this from here and  

move this to the folder that I'd like to have it.  So I'm going to do that. And right after that,  

let's go ahead and work with this follow now.  So as you can see, the location of that will be  

C Selenium drivers like that. And you can again,  put it in whatever location you would like to  

invite up to that I'm going to extract the  files in here. And as soon as I have done this,  

then you can see that we got the executable file  located in this directory. So it is a great start  

to solving our problems that we have when we try  to execute this fight on file. Perfect. So back to  

Python. Now, if we will try to execute this file  again, then we will end up with the same error.  

And this is because we did not perform the second  step that I talked about when we saw this error.  

And we need to now put the location of our  chromedriver in an environment variable that  

is called a path. Now the PATH environment  variable is going to be responsible for the  

files that your system should look up for when  you want to execute them immediately from the  

terminal. So that's why it should be inside the  PATH environment variable. Now we could have done  

this in the system level. But that is actually  a not great idea. If one day you would like to  

perform the Selenium project on another server. So  that's why configuring this environment variable  

in the code level and not in the system level is  considered as a best practice. So that's why I'm  

going to say up top here, something like import  OAS. And I'm going to now upload one more value to  

the already existing PATH environment variable. So  I'm going to say Oh, s dot n, v wrong like that.  

And then I'm going to look up for the key of  cat and make sure that you should do it all in  

capitalized like I did. And now we'd like to use  plus equals because we are adding a pet value to  

already existing pad, we could have multiple  values for this environment variable. And  

right here, we want to specify the location of  our chrome driver. So I can start typing here  

C, colon and Ford slash. So I'm pointing to the C  drive of my computer. And I'm going to say here,  

selenium drivers like that, because this is  the folder name where I have the chromedriver.  

Alright, so right after we have done this, then we  should add here the our letter before the double  

quotes. And this is actually a convention for a  prefix that is going to mark it as a role string  

and it is going to be helpful when you specify  paths to different locations. So now if we were  

to try to execute this program, then we should see  now the chrome popped up and that is exactly what  

is happening. So it means that now we are ready to  work and start trying to perform some automations  

on a random website. Alright, so now that we  understood how to set up a Selenium environment,  

let's try to perform some automation on a random  website. Now in this episode, specifically, I will  

start by a testing Selenium website which will  allow us to to basically take basic actions to  

get started with it. So I'm going to use this  Selenium ez.com website. And I'm going to go to  

this URL in here, which I will put the link of  that in the description. And I'm going to try to  

click on that start download, performing it with  the Selenium only. And right after we click on  

that, then we should somehow identify that the  progress has been completed. So actually, those  

kinds of actions are good candidates for actions  that you want to perform with Selenium without  

really being involved in clicking manually on  those buttons. So let's go ahead and get started.  

So first of First, we should understand how we  are going to identify the element that we want  

to click on. And in order to do something like  that, we can go to the element that we want. And  

we can click on Inspect like the following. Now  actually, when it comes to pages, then each page  

is going to have its unique HTML architecture.  And each HTML element is going to be described  

by each type. And as well as with some additional  attributes. So let's see what I said in action. So  

I'm going to say inspect. And as you can see, we  have this line in blue background. And as I said,  

the kind of this element is button because we  see that it is right after the tags. So that's  

why it is called a button HTML element. And as you  can see, it has different attributes like class,  

Id like that. So what we can do from here is  to try to identify the element that has the ID  

of download button, like it says in here. So  let's try to do and see how we can identify  

this specific element, and try to click on that.  Alright, so let's go back to pi charm. Now before  

I do that, let me copy the link of the website,  because we are going to use it just in a minute.  

All right, so now if I open pi charm, and go down,  and here we are ready to write some additional  

code. Now before everything, we need to specify  selenium, what is the website that we are going to  

use in our automation, so it should be done with  the get method that the driver is going to have.  

So I will say driver dot get. And as you can see,  it expects for a URL, so I can straight forward,  

put the link of the URL that we actually look to  perform some automatic actions. So as you can see,  

this is the way that the driver dot get should be  executed. Alright, so now that we have done this,  

then we should somehow tell the Selenium  that we like to click on an element  

that eats ID is download button. So I'm going  to say here, driver dot find underscore element,  

underscore by ID. And as you can see, we have  multiple methods of find element by so we have  

class name, CSS selector, and even more like name.  And those are methods that we are going to see in  

the future throughout the series. But let's  start with the ID. And I'm going to say here,  

download button, like the following. Now since  this entire statement is going to return us an  

object that we can actually do some additional  actions with it, then I should assign this to a  

variable. So I can say my element, something like  that. And then down below, I can say my element  

that click like that. And we should see Selenium  driver trying to click on that element. So let's  

test this out. So I'm going to execute that right  now. And I'm not going to touch anything. So  

let's see that in action. Alright, so it takes us  to here. And as you can see it immediately just  

click on that element, because we see  that progress box that says us now that  

the download has been completed. But there  is actually a big problem with doing this  

approach. Because sometimes, in most of the cases,  loading an entire website could take some time. So  

that's why we can go between those two lines, and  actually try to wait before we try to perform an  

action on an element. So that's why going between  those lines and saying something like driver  

that implicitly wait. And here, we should specify  the amount of seconds that we'd like to wait to  

this website, it's all being loaded successfully.  So we can say that we'd like to wait for example,  

three seconds, so it's considered as a better  thing to do, because now we are totally safe from  

our browser being a little bit slow sometimes.  Or maybe we can have some cases that our  

server could be very slow. So that's why waiting a  little bit here and there could be a better idea.  

So now if we run our program one more time,  then let's see the results. So at first again,  

the page is being loaded. Then as you can see it  immediately try to download this file. Now again,  

this is just a simulation, this really doesn't  download anything to your computer. Okay,  

so let's identify what happened in here. So first  off first, we can understand that it really did  

not wait three seconds. So what that means it  means that the implicitly wait does something  

special to our driver object, because we did  not really wait three seconds, right. So let's  

try to test this with 30 seconds now. So I'm going  to execute this one more time. And as you can see,