Selenium error: 'chromedriver' executable needs to be in PATH

Question

I have Chromium on my computer that runs Debian 9. Here's scraper.py:

from selenium import webdriver
import time

options = webdriver.ChromeOptions()
options.add_argument("--ignore-certificate-errors")
options.add_argument("--test-type")
options.binary_location = "/usr/bin/chromium"

driver = webdriver.Chrome(chrome_options=options)
driver.get("https://python.org")

The Chromium binary is at the specified location. When I run python scraper.py, I get this error.

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "scraper.py", line 9, in <module>
    driver = webdriver.Chrome(chrome_options=options)
  File "/home/me/ENV/pbc_vss/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/selenium/webdriver/chrome/webdriver.py", line 68, in __init__
    self.service.start()
  File "/home/me/ENV/pbc_vss/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/selenium/webdriver/common/service.py", line 83, in start
    os.path.basename(self.path), self.start_error_message)
selenium.common.exceptions.WebDriverException: Message: 'chromedriver' executable needs to be in PATH. Please see https://sites.google.com/a/chromium.org/chromedriver/home

chromedriver != the chrome (or chromium) browser. have you downloaded the file located at the provided sites.google link? — R Balasubramanian, Jul 05 '18 at 20:42
did you check that you have downloaded the file located at https://sites.google.com/a/chromium.org/chromedriver/home? — R Balasubramanian, Jul 05 '18 at 20:43
do you still get this error after installing your chromedriver executable? — R Balasubramanian, Jul 05 '18 at 20:57
There are so many duplicates of this question it's hard to pick just one. — Bryan Oakley, Jul 05 '18 at 20:58
Put `chromedriver` in the same folder as chromium binary. Works now — Username, Jul 05 '18 at 21:02

score 3 · Answer 1 · answered Jul 05 '18 at 20:49

3

specify the path where your chrome driver is located, download page https://sites.google.com/a/chromium.org/chromedriver/downloads

driver = webdriver.Chrome(executable_path='/path/to/driver/chromedriver')

answered Jul 05 '18 at 20:49

ergesto

367
1
8

i suspect this is not a path issue so much as @Username just didn't have the necessary file, given their comments – R Balasubramanian Jul 05 '18 at 20:51

R Balasubramanian · Answer 2 · 2018-07-05T21:02:49.843

Your browser binary (in this case, for chromium) is not the same thing as your chromedriver. Just having the binary means you can launch chromium yourself, for example, but webdrivers will not be able to launch their own instances of chrom(e/ium), thus preventing you from using selenium with them. The solution to this is to download a chromedriver executable of your choice (note that version may be significant) in a folder on your path, or directly supply the path when creating your webdriver.

Selenium error: 'chromedriver' executable needs to be in PATH

2 Answers2