Access to file download dialog in Firefox

Question

Is there any kind of API that can allow me to manipulate a file download dialog in Firefox? (I want to access the one that appears when user does something, not initiate one myself).

What I want to do is to access this dialog from Selenium (and whether Selenium "privileged mode" is enough to access chrome interface is something I am not sure about as well).

Answer 1

Most browsers (in mine case Firefox) select the OK button by default. So I managed to solve this by using the following code. It basically presses enter for you and the file is downloaded.

Robot robot = new Robot();

// A short pause, just to be sure that OK is selected
Thread.sleep(3000);

robot.keyPress(KeyEvent.VK_ENTER);
robot.keyRelease(KeyEvent.VK_ENTER);

Answer 2

Web Applications generate 3 different types of pop-ups; namely,

 1| JavaScript PopUps
 2| Browser PopUps
 3| Native OS PopUps [e.g., Windows Popup like Upload/Download]

In General, the JavaScript pop-ups are generated by the web application code. Selenium provides an API to handle these JavaScript pop-ups, such as Alert.

Eventually, the simplest way to ignore Browser pop-up and download files is done by making use of Browser profiles; There are couple of ways to do this:

• Manually involve changes on browser properties (or)
• Customize browser properties using profile setPreference

Method1

Before you start working with pop-ups on Browser profiles, make sure that the Download options are set default to Save File.

(Open Firefox) Tools > Options > Applications

Method2

Make use of the below snippet and do edits whenever necessary.

FirefoxProfile profile = new FirefoxProfile();

String path = "C:\\Test\\";
profile.setPreference("browser.download.folderList", 2);
profile.setPreference("browser.download.dir", path);
profile.setPreference("browser.download.manager.alertOnEXEOpen", false);
profile.setPreference("browser.helperApps.neverAsk.saveToDisk", "application/msword, application/csv, application/ris, text/csv, image/png, application/pdf, text/html, text/plain, application/zip, application/x-zip, application/x-zip-compressed, application/download, application/octet-stream");
profile.setPreference("browser.download.manager.showWhenStarting", false);
profile.setPreference("browser.download.manager.focusWhenStarting", false);  
profile.setPreference("browser.download.useDownloadDir", true);
profile.setPreference("browser.helperApps.alwaysAsk.force", false);
profile.setPreference("browser.download.manager.alertOnEXEOpen", false);
profile.setPreference("browser.download.manager.closeWhenDone", true);
profile.setPreference("browser.download.manager.showAlertOnComplete", false);
profile.setPreference("browser.download.manager.useWindow", false);
profile.setPreference("services.sync.prefs.sync.browser.download.manager.showWhenStarting", false);
profile.setPreference("pdfjs.disabled", true);

driver = new FirefoxDriver(profile);

Answer 3

Instead of triggering the native file-download dialog like so:

By DOWNLOAD_ANCHOR = By.partialLinkText("download");
driver.findElement(DOWNLOAD_ANCHOR).click();

I usually do this instead, to bypass the native File Download dialog. This way it works on ALL browsers:

String downloadURL = driver.findElement(DOWNLOAD_ANCHOR).getAttribute("href");
File downloadedFile = getFileFromURL(downloadURL);

This just requires that you implement method getFileFromURL that uses Apache HttpClient to download a file and return a File reference to you.

Similarly, if you happen to be using Selenide, it works the same way using the built-in download() function for handling file downloads.

Answer 4

I have a solution for this issue, check the code:

FirefoxProfile firefoxProfile = new FirefoxProfile();

firefoxProfile.setPreference("browser.download.folderList",2);
firefoxProfile.setPreference("browser.download.manager.showWhenStarting",false);
firefoxProfile.setPreference("browser.download.dir","c:\\downloads");
firefoxProfile.setPreference("browser.helperApps.neverAsk.saveToDisk","text/csv");

WebDriver driver = new FirefoxDriver(firefoxProfile);//new RemoteWebDriver(new URL("http://localhost:4444/wd/hub"), capability);

driver.navigate().to("http://www.myfile.com/hey.csv");

Answer 5

I was facing the same issue. In our application the instance of FireFox was created by passing the DesiredCapabilities as follows

driver = new FirefoxDriver(capabilities);

Based on the suggestions by others, I did my changes as

FirefoxProfile firefoxProfile = new FirefoxProfile();     
firefoxProfile.setPreference("browser.helperApps.neverAsk.saveToDisk",
    "application/octet-stream");
driver = new FirefoxDrvier(firefoxProfile);

This served the purpose but unfortunately my other automation tests started failing. And the reason was, I have removed the capabilities which were being passed earlier.

Some more browsing on net and found an alternate way. We can set the profile itself in the desired Capabilities.

So the new working code looks like

DesiredCapabilities capabilities = DesiredCapabilities.firefox();

// add more capabilities as per your need.
FirefoxProfile firefoxProfile = new FirefoxProfile();        
firefoxProfile.setPreference("browser.helperApps.neverAsk.saveToDisk",
    "application/octet-stream");

// set the firefoxprofile as a capability
capabilities.setCapability(FirefoxDriver.PROFILE, firefoxProfile);
driver = new FirefoxDriver(capabilities);

Answer 6

I was stuck with the same problem, but I found a solution. I did it the same way as this blog did.

Of course this was Java, I've translated it to Python:

fp = webdriver.FirefoxProfile()

fp.set_preference("browser.download.folderList",2)
fp.set_preference("browser.download.manager.showWhenStarting",False)
fp.set_preference("browser.download.dir",getcwd())
fp.set_preference("browser.helperApps.neverAsk.saveToDisk","text/csv")

browser = webdriver.Firefox(firefox_profile=fp)

In my example it was a CSV file. But when you need more, there are stored in the ~/.mozilla/$USER_PROFILE/mimeTypes.rdf