# Python Selenium Module

Selenium is a powerful tool for controlling web browsers through programs and performing browser automation. It is widely used for testing web applications and scraping dynamic websites.

## Installation

```bash
pip install selenium
```

*Note: Modern Selenium (4.6+) automatically manages browser drivers, so you typically don't need to manually download `chromedriver` or `geckodriver` anymore.*

## Basic Usage

```python
from selenium import webdriver
from selenium.webdriver.common.by import By
from selenium.webdriver.common.keys import Keys
import time

# Initialize the browser (Chrome)
driver = webdriver.Chrome()

# Open a website
driver.get("https://www.google.com")

# Get page title
print(driver.title)

# Close the browser
# driver.quit()
```

## Locating Elements

You can locate elements using the `By` strategy.

```python
# Find element by Name attribute
search_box = driver.find_element(By.NAME, "q")

# Find element by ID
# el = driver.find_element(By.ID, "some-id")

# Find element by CSS Selector
# el = driver.find_element(By.CSS_SELECTOR, "div.classname")

# Find element by XPath
# el = driver.find_element(By.XPATH, "//button[@type='submit']")
```

## Interacting with Elements

```python
# Typing
search_box.send_keys("Python Selenium")

# Pressing Enter
search_box.send_keys(Keys.RETURN)

# Clicking
# button.click()
```

## Waits

Websites load dynamically. Using `time.sleep()` is unreliable. Use **Explicit Waits** instead.

```python
from selenium.webdriver.support.ui import WebDriverWait
from selenium.webdriver.support import expected_conditions as EC

try:
    # Wait up to 10 seconds for the element to be present
    element = WebDriverWait(driver, 10).until(
        EC.presence_of_element_located((By.ID, "result-stats"))
    )
    print("Page loaded!")
finally:
    driver.quit()
```

## Headless Mode

Run the browser in the background without a UI.

```python
options = webdriver.ChromeOptions()
options.add_argument("--headless=new")
driver = webdriver.Chrome(options=options)
```

[[programming/python/python]]