How to incorporate a while loop within a Python try/except?

Question

Selenium Webdriver with Python regularly fails to launch the Firefox browser, and a retry is often needed. Usually a single or second retry is sufficient, so I do the following:

try: 
    self.driver = webdriver.Firefox()
except WebDriverException, e:
    print "Unable to load profile, retrying"
    try: 
        self.driver = webdriver.Firefox()
    except WebDriverException, e:
        print "Unable to load profile, retrying"
        self.driver = webdriver.Firefox()

This is no longer serving me, as it is now regularly taking 3 or more retries before the browser launches. What is the neatest way to incorporate a while loop such that it keeps retrying until the browser successfully loads (at which point self.driver will exist as an object)?

Note: I know that there is a slight chance that an infinite loop may be encountered, but for the purposes of supplying suggestions, you may disregard this fact.

Answer 1

How about defining self.driver as None before the while loop and then looping till its not None ? Example -

self.driver = None
while not self.driver:
    try: 
        self.driver = webdriver.Firefox()
    except WebDriverException, e:
        print "Unable to load profile, retrying"

Answer 2

You can use python's else clause. Check python's exception handling

while True:
    try:
        self.driver = webdriver.Firefox()
    except WebDriverException, e:
        print "Unable to load profile, retrying"
    else:
        break

Answer 3

It is very interesting for you to say loading Firefox will often fail, it has never happened to me before. I have been running Selenium tests for a while now. You may want to investigate why your Firefox driver keeps failing, does it need an update?

I suggest you do implement a limit on how many time it will retry.

numberOfRetry = 5
while (driver==None):
    try:
        driver = webdriver.Firefox()
    except:
        numberOfRetry-=1
        if numberOfRetry <= 0:
            logging.critical("Maximum number of retry reached")
            break