{"repo":"mherrmann/helium","free":true,"listed":false,"github":"https://github.com/mherrmann/helium","clone":"git clone https://github.com/mherrmann/helium.git","description":"Lighter web automation with Python","language":"Python","stars":8326,"topics":["selenium","selenium-python","python","python3","webdriver","chrome","firefox","web-automation","web-scraping","helium"],"license":"MIT","category":"scrapers-browser-automation","readme_excerpt":"Lighter web automation with Python Helium is a Python library for automating browsers such as Chrome and Firefox. For example: Installation To get started with Helium, you need Python 3 and Chrome or Firefox. I would recommend creating a virtual environment. This lets you install Helium for just your current project, instead of globally on your whole computer. To create and activate a virtual environment, type the following commands into a command prompt window: Then, you can install Helium with pip : Now enter python into the command prompt and (for instance) the commands in the animation at the top of this page ( from helium import , ...). Your first script I've compiled a cheatsheet that quickly teaches you all you need to know to be productive with Helium. For a more complete reference of Helium's features, please see the documentation. Connection to Selenium Under the hood, Helium forwards each call to Selenium. The difference is that Helium's API is much more high-level. In Selenium, you need to use HTML IDs, XPaths and CSS selectors to identify web page elements. Helium on the other hand lets you refer to elements by user-visible labels. As a result, Helium scripts are typically 30-50% shorter than similar Selenium scripts. What's more, they are easier to read and more stable with respect to changes in the underlying web page. Because Helium is simply a wrapper around Selenium, you can freely mix the two libraries. For example: So in other words, you don't lose anythin","default_branch":null,"files":null,"tree":[],"storefront":"/r/mherrmann","claimed":false,"request_supported":{"post":"https://gitbuyer.com/r/mherrmann/helium/request-supported","requests":0},"note":"indexed from public GitHub; nothing is for sale on this page. Clone it from GitHub. Paid listings live at /search."}