how to save opened page as pdf in Selenium (Python)

Question

Have tried all the solutions I could find on the Internet to be able to print a page that is open in Selenium in Python. However, while the print pop-up shows up, after a second or two it goes away, with no PDF saved.

Here is the code being tried. Based on the code here - https://stackoverflow.com/a/43752129/3973491

Coding on a Mac with Mojave 10.14.5.

from selenium import webdriver
from selenium.webdriver.support.select import Select
from selenium.webdriver.common.by import By
from selenium.webdriver.support.ui import WebDriverWait
from selenium.webdriver.support import expected_conditions as EC
from selenium.common.exceptions import NoSuchElementException
from selenium.common.exceptions import TimeoutException
from selenium.webdriver.chrome.options import Options
from selenium.common.exceptions import WebDriverException
import time
import json

options = Options()
appState = {
    "recentDestinations": [
        {
            "id": "Save as PDF",
            "origin": "local"
        }
    ],
    "selectedDestinationId": "Save as PDF",
    "version": 2
}

profile = {'printing.print_preview_sticky_settings.appState': json.dumps(appState)}
# profile = {'printing.print_preview_sticky_settings.appState':json.dumps(appState),'savefile.default_directory':downloadPath}
options.add_experimental_option('prefs', profile)
options.add_argument('--kiosk-printing')
CHROMEDRIVER_PATH = '/usr/local/bin/chromedriver'

driver = webdriver.Chrome(options=options, executable_path=CHROMEDRIVER_PATH)
driver.implicitly_wait(5)
driver.get(url)
driver.execute_script('window.print();')

$chromedriver --v
ChromeDriver 75.0.3770.90 (a6dcaf7e3ec6f70a194cc25e8149475c6590e025-refs/branch-heads/3770@{#1003})

Any hints or solutions as to what can be done to print the open html page to a PDF. Have spent hours trying to make this work. Thank you!

---

Update on 2019-07-11:

My question has been identified as a duplicate, but a) the other question seems to be using javascript code, and b) the answer does not solve the problem being raised in this question - it may be to do with more recent software versions. Chrome version being used is Version 75.0.3770.100 (Official Build) (64-bit), and chromedriver is ChromeDriver 75.0.3770.90. On Mac OS Mojave. Script is running on Python 3.7.3.

Update on 2019-07-11:

Changed the code to

from selenium import webdriver
import json

chrome_options = webdriver.ChromeOptions()
settings = {
    "appState": {
        "recentDestinations": [{
            "id": "Save as PDF",
            "origin": "local",
            "account": "",
        }],
        "selectedDestinationId": "Save as PDF",
        "version": 2
    }
}
prefs = {'printing.print_preview_sticky_settings': json.dumps(settings)}
chrome_options.add_experimental_option('prefs', prefs)
chrome_options.add_argument('--kiosk-printing')
CHROMEDRIVER_PATH = '/usr/local/bin/chromedriver'
driver = webdriver.Chrome(chrome_options=chrome_options, executable_path=CHROMEDRIVER_PATH)
driver.get("https://google.com")
driver.execute_script('window.print();')
driver.quit()

And now, nothing happens. Chrome launches, loads url, print dialog appears but then nothing seems to happen - nothing in the default printer queue, and no pdf either - I even searched for the PDF files by looking up "Recent Files" on Mac.

Answer 1

The answer here , worked when I did not have any other printer setup in my OS. But when I had another default printer, this did not work.

I don't understand how, but making small change this way seems to work.

from selenium import webdriver
import json

chrome_options = webdriver.ChromeOptions()
settings = {
       "recentDestinations": [{
            "id": "Save as PDF",
            "origin": "local",
            "account": "",
        }],
        "selectedDestinationId": "Save as PDF",
        "version": 2
    }
prefs = {'printing.print_preview_sticky_settings.appState': json.dumps(settings)}
chrome_options.add_experimental_option('prefs', prefs)
chrome_options.add_argument('--kiosk-printing')
CHROMEDRIVER_PATH = '/usr/local/bin/chromedriver'
driver = webdriver.Chrome(chrome_options=chrome_options, executable_path=CHROMEDRIVER_PATH)
driver.get("https://google.com")
driver.execute_script('window.print();')
driver.quit()

Answer 2

The solution is not very good, but you can take a screenshot and convert to pdf by Pillow...

from selenium import webdriver
from io import BytesIO
from PIL import Image

driver = webdriver.Chrome(executable_path='path to your driver')
driver.get('your url here')
img = Image.open(BytesIO(driver.find_element_by_tag_name('body').screenshot_as_png))
img.save('filename.pdf', "PDF", quality=100)

Answer 3

You can use the following code to print PDFs in A5 size with background css enabled:

import os
from selenium import webdriver
from selenium.webdriver.common.keys import Keys
import json
import time

chrome_options = webdriver.ChromeOptions()

settings = {
    "recentDestinations": [{
        "id": "Save as PDF",
        "origin": "local",
        "account": ""
    }],
    "selectedDestinationId": "Save as PDF",
    "version": 2,
    "isHeaderFooterEnabled": False,
    "mediaSize": {
        "height_microns": 210000,
        "name": "ISO_A5",
        "width_microns": 148000,
        "custom_display_name": "A5"
    },
    "customMargins": {},
    "marginsType": 2,
    "scaling": 175,
    "scalingType": 3,
    "scalingTypePdf": 3,
    "isCssBackgroundEnabled": True
}

mobile_emulation = { "deviceName": "Nexus 5" }
chrome_options.add_experimental_option("mobileEmulation", mobile_emulation)
chrome_options.add_argument('--enable-print-browser')
#chrome_options.add_argument('--headless')

prefs = {
    'printing.print_preview_sticky_settings.appState': json.dumps(settings),
    'savefile.default_directory': '<path>'
}
chrome_options.add_argument('--kiosk-printing')
chrome_options.add_experimental_option('prefs', prefs)

for dirpath, dirnames, filenames in os.walk('<source path>'):
    for fileName in filenames:
        print(fileName)
        driver = webdriver.Chrome("./chromedriver", options=chrome_options)
        driver.get(f'file://{os.path.join(dirpath, fileName)}')
        time.sleep(7)
        driver.execute_script('window.print();')
        driver.close()

Answer 4

Use pdfkit instead:

import pdfkit

pdfkit.from_url('http://stackoverflow.com', 'page.pdf')

Answer 5

Here is the solution I use with Windows :

• First download the ChromeDriver here : http://chromedriver.chromium.org/downloads and install Selenium

• Then run this code (based on the accepted answer, slightly modified to work on Windows):

   import json from selenium import webdriver chrome_options = webdriver.ChromeOptions() settings = {"recentDestinations": [{"id": "Save as PDF", "origin": "local", "account": ""}], "selectedDestinationId": "Save as PDF", "version": 2} prefs = {'printing.print_preview_sticky_settings.appState': json.dumps(settings)} chrome_options.add_experimental_option('prefs', prefs) chrome_options.add_argument('--kiosk-printing') browser = webdriver.Chrome(r"chromedriver.exe", options=chrome_options) browser.get("https://google.com/") browser.execute_script('window.print();') browser.close()

Answer 6

I would suggest Downloading the page source html which can be done like so in vb.net: Dim Html As String = webdriver.PageSource Not sure how it is done in python but I'm sure it's very similar Once you have done that then you can select the parts of the page you want to save using an html parser or by parsing it manually with string parsing code. Once you have the html for the part you want to save stored in a string then use an html to pdf converter library or program. There are lots of these for programming languages like C# and vb.net. I don't know about any for python but I'm sure some exist. Just do some research. (some are free and some are expensive)