Book Image

Python Automation Cookbook - Second Edition

By : Jaime Buelta
Book Image

Python Automation Cookbook - Second Edition

By: Jaime Buelta

Overview of this book

In this updated and extended version of Python Automation Cookbook, each chapter now comprises the newest recipes and is revised to align with Python 3.8 and higher. The book includes three new chapters that focus on using Python for test automation, machine learning projects, and for working with messy data. This edition will enable you to develop a sharp understanding of the fundamentals required to automate business processes through real-world tasks, such as developing your first web scraping application, analyzing information to generate spreadsheet reports with graphs, and communicating with automatically generated emails. Once you grasp the basics, you will acquire the practical knowledge to create stunning graphs and charts using Matplotlib, generate rich graphics with relevant information, automate marketing campaigns, build machine learning projects, and execute debugging techniques. By the end of this book, you will be proficient in identifying monotonous tasks and resolving process inefficiencies to produce superior and reliable systems.
Table of Contents (16 chapters)
14
Other Books You May Enjoy
15
Index

Using Selenium for advanced interaction

Sometimes, nothing short of the real thing will work. Selenium is a project to use to achieve automation in web browsers. It's conceived as a way of automatic testing, but it also can be used to automate interactions with a site.

Selenium can control Safari, Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer, or Microsoft Edge, though it requires installing a specific driver for each case. We'll use Chrome.

Getting ready

We need to install the right driver for Chrome, called chromedriver. It is available here: https://sites.google.com/a/chromium.org/chromedriver/. It is available for most platforms. It also requires that you have Chrome installed: https://www.google.com/chrome/.

Add the selenium module to requirements.txt and install it:

$ echo "selenium==3.141.0" >> requirements.txt
$ pip install -r requirements.txt

How to do it...

  1. Import Selenium, start a browser and load the form page. A...