Unable to obtain driver for chrome - Solution Included

[sillydrycoder]

If you encountering an issue with initializing the Chrome driver in my web scraping bot. Below is the error message and the steps to resolve it.

Error Message:

Unable to obtain driver for chrome; For documentation on this error, please visit: https://www.selenium.dev/documentation/webdriver/troubleshooting/errors/driver_location

Expected Behavior:
The bot should successfully initialize the Chrome driver and start browsing.

Actual Behavior:
The bot fails with above error when attempting to initialize the Chrome driver.

Reasoning
Sometimes the installation or configuration is incomplete. It might raise an error to locate chromedriver which is esential to link selenium with chrome for automation purposes. This error is not OS specific and the best solution is to use an externally provided chromedriver.

Environment with issue:

• OS: Mostly Linux
• Python version: 3.1x
• Selenium version: 4x
• Chrome version: 127

Troubleshooting Steps Taken:

• Verified that the chromedriver executable is present and in the expected location.
• Ensured compatibility between the ChromeDriver and Chrome versions(must be the same with major version).

Solution:
The issue often arises due to one of the following reasons:

1. ChromeDriver Path:

   • Ensure that chromedriver is in the same directory of script .
   • Bot searches for chromedriver in same directory

2. ChromeDriver Version Mismatch:

   • Make sure that the ChromeDriver version matches the version of Chrome you are using. You can download the appropriate version of ChromeDriver from here.

3. OS-Specific Issues:

   • For Windows: Check that there are no permission issues and that the executable is not blocked by antivirus.
   • For macOS/Linux: Ensure the file has execute permissions (chmod +x chromedriver).

Additional Resources:

• ChromeDriver Documentation
• Selenium Installation Guide

---

Make sure to mark use_chromedriver as true in config.json. Otherwise program will not use the external chromedriver.

---

Conclusion:
If you encounter the same issue, please verify the points listed in the solution section. If the problem persists, feel free to reach out with additional details or context.