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How to Use Different Browser Types in Selenium and Browserist#

If you need to automate web scraping or test flows with different browsers – for example, Firefox, Edge, or Chrome – Selenium and Browserist do it differently.

Basic Usage#

With Selenium#

If you want to use Chrome for browser automation with Selenium, here's how to initiate a session:

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from selenium import webdriver

driver = webdriver.Chrome()

driver.get("https://example.com")
driver.implicitly_wait(5)
driver.quit()

If you want to use Firefox, just replace webdriver.Chrome() with webdriver.Firefox(). Or use webdriver.Edge() for Edge.

With Browserist#

With Browserist, you can often achieve the same thing, but with less and more readable code:

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from browserist import Browser, BrowserSettings, BrowserType

settings = BrowserSettings(type=BrowserType.CHROME)
with Browser(settings) as browser:
    browser.open.url("https://example.com")

For Firefox or Edge, just replace BrowserType.CHROME with BrowserType.FIREFOX or BrowserType.EDGE, respectively.

Multiple Browsers in a Session#

Let's imagine another example where we want to do the same task, but with different browser types.

With Browserist#

Because the configuration class is separate from the web driver and consistent across browser types, Browserist often scales with less code compared to Selenium:

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from browserist import Browser, BrowserSettings, BrowserType

chrome = BrowserSettings(type=BrowserType.CHROME)
edge = BrowserSettings(type=BrowserType.EDGE)
firefox = BrowserSettings(type=BrowserType.FIREFOX)

for settings in [chrome, edge, firefox]:
    with Browser(settings) as browser:
        browser.open.url("https://example.com")
        # Do something

With Selenium#

With Selenium, the above example could be rewritten like this:

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from selenium import webdriver

def do_something(driver)
    driver.get("https://example.com")
    driver.implicitly_wait(5)
    # Do someting
    driver.quit()

chrome_driver = webdriver.Chrome()
do_something(chrome_driver)

edge_driver = webdriver.Edge()
do_something(edge_driver)

firefox_driver = webdriver.Firefox()
do_something(firefox_driver)

Selenium Mixed with Browserist#

Alternatively, you can mix Selenium with Browserist:

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from browserist import Browser, BrowserSettings, BrowserType

chrome = BrowserSettings(type=BrowserType.CHROME)
edge = BrowserSettings(type=BrowserType.EDGE)
firefox = BrowserSettings(type=BrowserType.FIREFOX)

for settings in [chrome, edge, firefox]:
    with Browser(settings) as browser:
        driver = browser.driver
        driver.get("https://example.com")
        # Do something