Skip to content

How to Open and Manage Tabs#

Tabs are a convenient way to organize and navigate multiple web pages within a single browser window. With Browserist, you can easily automate the process of opening and managing tabs.

Basic Usage#

Let's imagine you want to open a web page first and then open another page in a new tab, a basic example would look like this:

Python
1
2
3
4
5
from browserist import Browser

with Browser() as browser:
    browser.open.url("https://example.com")
    browser.window.open.new_tab("https://google.com")

Multiple#

Opening Multiple Tabs#

Normally, browsers allow you to open a new tab by pressing Ctrl + T in Windows, Cmd + T on a Mac, or by clicking a button in your browser. With Browserist you can automate this, for example based on a list of URLs. This example will open each URL in a new tab:

Python
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
from browserist import Browser

urls = ["https://example.com", "https://google.com", "https://bing.com"]

with Browser() as browser:
    for url in urls:
        browser.window.open.new_tab(url)

Closing a Tab#

How to close the current tab or, if it's the last tab in a window, the current browser window:

Python
1
2
3
4
5
6
from browserist import Browser

with Browser() as browser:
    browser.open.url("https://example.com")
    browser.window.open.new_tab("https://google.com")
    browser.window.close()

Switching Between Tabs#

Switching between tabs is a common task when using a browser. Instead of either clicking a tab to switch to it or using a keyboard shortcut to cycle through open tabs, you can automate this with Browserist:

Python
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
from browserist import Browser

urls = ["https://example.com", "https://google.com", "https://bing.com"]

with Browser() as browser:
    for i, url in enumerate(urls):
        browser.window.open.new_tab(url, f"tab_{i}")

Now we can switch between each tab by calling its handle:

Python
 8
 9
10
    browser.window.switch_to("tab_0")
    browser.window.switch_to("tab_1")
    browser.window.switch_to("tab_2")

Return to the Initial Tab#

Browserist also keeps track of the initial tab of the original browser window, so you can easily switch back to it:

Python
1
2
3
4
5
6
from browserist import Browser

with Browser() as browser:
    browser.open.url("https://example.com")
    browser.window.open.new_tab("https://google.com")
    browser.window.switch_to_original_window()

Get Handle ID of Current Tab#

Under the hood, Browserist uses handle IDs to manage and identify open windows and tabs. You can get the handle ID of the current tab to switch back to it later:

Python
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
from browserist import Browser

with Browser() as browser:
    browser.open.url("https://example.com")
    base_handle_id = browser.window.handle.current()
    browser.window.open.new_tab("https://google.com")
    browser.window.switch_to(base_handle_id)

Example#

Get List of URLs from Open Tabs#

Because a link can redirect to a different destination than the original URL, you sometimes want to capture the actual destination of each page. Here is an example of how to capture all the links from a web page and open them in new tabs:

Python
 1
 2
 3
 4
 5
 6
 7
 8
 9
10
11
12
13
from browserist import Browser

results = []

with Browser() as browser:
    browser.open.url("https://example.com")
    all_links = browser.get.url.from_links("//a")
    for link in all_links:
        browser.window.open.new_tab(link)
        current_url = browser.get.url.current()
        results.append(current_url)

print(results)