Lesson 38:

The Webbrowser Module

The webbrowser module has tools to manage a webbrowser from Python.

webbrowser.open() opens a new browser window at a url:



In [1]:

    
import webbrowser

webbrowser.open('https://automatetheboringstuff.com')









    Out[1]:





True

This is the primary function of the webbrowser module, but it can be used as part of a script to improve web scraping. selenium is a more full featured web browser module.

Google Maps Opener:



In [3]:

    
import webbrowser, sys, pyperclip

sys.argv # Pass system arguments to program; mapit.py '870' 'Valencia' 'St.'

# Check if command line arguments were passed; useful if this existed as a .py in the path (run via mapit 'Some address')
# For Jupyter version, will just pass in arguments earlier in document
if len(sys.argv) > 1:
    # Join individual arguments into one string: mapit.py '870' 'Valencia' 'St.' > mapit.py '870 Valencia St.'
    address = ' '.join(sys.argv[1:]) 
    # Skip the first argument (mapit.py), but join every slice from [1:] with ' '
else: 
    # Read the clipboard if no arguments found
    address = pyperclip.paste()
    
# Example Google Map URLs
# Default: https://www.google.com/maps/place/870+Valencia+St,+San+Francisco,+CA+94110/@37.7589845,-122.4237899,17z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m2!3m1!1s0x808f7e3db2792a09:0x4fc69a2eea9fb3d3
# Test: https://www.google.com/maps/place/870+Valencia+St,+San+Francisco,+CA+94110/
# Test: https://www.google.com/maps/place/870 Valencia St


# This works, so just concatenate the default google maps url with a spaced address variable
webbrowser.open('https://www.google.com/maps/place' + address)

To run this is a script, we would need to the full path to python, followed by the script, followed by the address.

An easy way to skip this process is to create a shell script holding the script addresses, and passing arguments to it:



In [ ]:

    
#! usr/bin/env bash

#python3 mapit.py %*

Recap

The webbrowser module can be used to interact with the system browser.
The sys.argv function can pass system arguments to a python program.
Python programs can be referenced in a shell or bash script to be executed outside Python.