Page load strategy for Chrome driver (Updated till Selenium v3.12.0)

Question

I'm using Chrome browser for testing WebApp.

Sometimes pages loaded after very long time. I needed to stop downloading or limit their download time.

In FireFox I know about PAGE_LOAD_STRATEGY = "eager".

Is there something similar for chrome?

P.S.: driver.manage().timeouts().pageLoadTimeout() works, but after that any treatment to Webdriver throws TimeOutException. I need to get the current url of the page after stopping its boot.

Aberdeen

Answer 1

ChromeDriver 77.0 (which supports Chrome version 77) now supports eager as pageLoadStrategy.

Resolved issue 1902: Support eager page load strategy [Pri-2]

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From the Webdriver specs:

For commands that cause a new document to load, the point at which the command returns is determined by the session’s page loading strategy.

When Page Loading takes too much time and you need to stop downloading additional subresources (images, css, js etc) you can change the pageLoadStrategy through the webdriver.

As of this writing, pageLoadStrategy supports the following values :

1. normal

   This stategy causes Selenium to wait for the full page loading (html content and subresources downloaded and parsed).

2. eager

   This stategy causes Selenium to wait for the DOMContentLoaded event (html content downloaded and parsed only).

3. none

   This strategy causes Selenium to return immediately after the initial page content is fully received (html content downloaded).

By default, when Selenium loads a page, it follows the normal pageLoadStrategy.

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Here is the code block to configure pageLoadStrategy() through both an instance of DesiredCapabilities Class and ChromeOptions Class as follows : :

• Using DesiredCapabilities Class :

  package demo; //replace by your own package name
  
  import org.openqa.selenium.WebDriver;
  import org.openqa.selenium.chrome.ChromeDriver;
  import org.openqa.selenium.chrome.ChromeOptions;
  import org.openqa.selenium.remote.DesiredCapabilities;
  
  public class A_Chrome_DCap_Options {
  
      public static void main(String[] args) {
  
          System.setProperty("webdriver.chrome.driver", "C:\\Utility\\BrowserDrivers\\chromedriver.exe");
          DesiredCapabilities dcap = new DesiredCapabilities();
          dcap.setCapability("pageLoadStrategy", "normal");
          ChromeOptions opt = new ChromeOptions();
          opt.merge(dcap);
          WebDriver driver = new ChromeDriver(opt);
          driver.get("https://www.google.com/");
          System.out.println(driver.getTitle());
          driver.quit();
      }
  }
  

• Using ChromeOptions Class :

  package demo; //replace by your own package name
  
  import org.openqa.selenium.PageLoadStrategy;
  import org.openqa.selenium.WebDriver;
  import org.openqa.selenium.chrome.ChromeDriver;
  import org.openqa.selenium.chrome.ChromeOptions;
  
  
  public class A_Chrome_Options_test {
  
      public static void main(String[] args) {
  
          System.setProperty("webdriver.chrome.driver", "C:\\Utility\\BrowserDrivers\\chromedriver.exe");
          ChromeOptions opt = new ChromeOptions();
          opt.setPageLoadStrategy(PageLoadStrategy.NORMAL);
          WebDriver driver = new ChromeDriver(opt);
          driver.get("https://www.google.com/");
          System.out.println(driver.getTitle());
          driver.quit();
      }
  }
  

Note : pageLoadStrategy values normal, eager and none is a requirement as per WebDriver W3C Editor's Draft but pageLoadStrategy value as eager is still a WIP (Work In Progress) within ChromeDriver implementation. You can find a detailed discussion in “Eager” Page Load Strategy workaround for Chromedriver Selenium in Python

---

References:

• WebDriver navigation
• WebDriver page load strategies
• WhatWG Document readyStateChange / readiness

Pardon

Yes! It helps me. But why.....? How it works? Why we must set pageLoadStrategy = none? Why pageLoadStrategy = eager not works? – Aberdeen

@DebanjanB Your answer doesn't explain how change in pageLoadStrategy affects the behavior, so a follow-up question is more than expected, and not answering it is just plain rude. Thanks – Monocyclic

@Aberdeen Chrome does not support the eager page load strategy. – Mousetrap

Can you provide your code in Python? I use Python and I don't know how to write it in Python, thanks. – Debit

Answer 2

For Selenium 4 and Python

from selenium import webdriver
from selenium.webdriver.chrome.options import Options
options = Options()
options.page_load_strategy = 'none'
driver = webdriver.Chrome(options=options)
driver.get("http://www.google.com")
driver.quit()

For more details can be found here https://www.selenium.dev/documentation/webdriver/capabilities/shared/#none

Clarissaclarisse

Answer 3

In C#, since PageLoadStrategy.Eager doesn't seem to work for Chrome, I just wrote it myself with a WebDriverWait. Set the PageLoadStrategy to none and then doing this will basically override it:

new WebDriverWait(_driver, TimeSpan.FromSeconds(20))
    .Until(d =>
    {
      var result = ((IJavaScriptExecutor) d).ExecuteScript("return document.readyState");
      return result.Equals("interactive") || result.Equals("complete");
    });

You just add in your chrome driver as a parameter and the TimeSpan is set to a max of 20 seconds in my case. So it will wait a max of 20 seconds for the page to be interactive or complete

Blondy

Answer 4

Try using explicit wait . Visit this link. It might be helpful

Try this code as well:

WebDriver driver = new FirefoxDriver();
String startURL = //a starting url;
String currentURL = null;
WebDriverWait wait = new WebDriverWait(driver, 10);

foo(driver,startURL);

/* go to next page */
if(driver.findElement(By.xpath("//*[@id='someID']")).isDisplayed()){
    String previousURL = driver.getCurrentUrl();
    driver.findElement(By.xpath("//*[@id='someID']")).click();  
    driver.manage().timeouts().implicitlyWait(30, TimeUnit.SECONDS);

    ExpectedCondition e = new ExpectedCondition<Boolean>() {
          public Boolean apply(WebDriver d) {
            return (d.getCurrentUrl() != previousURL);
          }
        };

    wait.until(e);
    currentURL = driver.getCurrentUrl();
    System.out.println(currentURL);
}   

I hope your problem will be resolved using above code

Clawson