Web scraping: webbrowser issue

[Truman]

I started a new chapter in Automate Boring Stuff with Python called Web Scraping ( and I'm planning to focus on this field so if you have any other useful link you're welcome to share ) but since the start I'm facing an obstacle.
When I run the first code with Python IDLE

import webbrowser webbrowser.open('http://inventwithpython.com/')

it opens web page pretty fast but when I write a code in notepad++ and try to start a created file in command prompt I receive an error:

Error:
C:\Python36\kodovi>webscrap.py Warning, log file not found starting a new one [17, 34, 23, 6, 4, 30, 5] 0.1451710693150684 11716 days, 0:00:00 Traceback (most recent call last): File "C:\Python36\kodovi\webscrap.py", line 1, in <module> import webbrowser File "C:\Python36\lib\webbrowser.py", line 532, in <module> if shutil.which(browser): AttributeError: module 'shutil' has no attribute 'which'

Not sure what's going on here...

[Larz60+]

I don't know what you are doing, it works when I try it.

[metulburr]

"which" was added to "shutil" in python 3.3.

So somewhere you are really running python 3.2 or less, not python3.6

[snippsat]

Check if you have named a file shutil.py,if you have rename it.
How it shall look.

λ ptpython >>> import shutil >>> shutil.__file__ 'c:\\python36\\lib\\shutil.py' >>> shutil.which <function which at 0x036F5E40> >>> help(shutil.which) Help on function which in module shutil: which(cmd, mode=1, path=None) Given a command, mode, and a PATH string, return the path which conforms to the given mode on the PATH, or None if there is no such file. `mode` defaults to os.F_OK | os.X_OK. `path` defaults to the result of os.environ.get("PATH"), or can be overridden with a custom search path.

[Truman]

Bingo! After removing shutil.py it works fine.

[metulburr]

A lot of newbies hit that gotcha
https://python-forum.io/Thread-Basic-Python-Gotchas

[Truman]

Thank you for the link, will take a closer look.

regarding webbrowser module it opens web sites with Internet Explorer browser. Any idea how to change that to Firefox or any other browser just not this obsolete one?

[metulburr]

you can see available browsers with webbrowser._tryorder and the order it will try to open them in

>>> import webbrowser as wb >>> wb._tryorder ['xdg-open', 'gvfs-open', 'x-www-browser', 'firefox', 'google-chrome'] >>> wb.get('firefox').open('https://www.google.com')

Im not too sure about windows but you may have to register it?

import webbrowser ffpath = 'C:\\Program Files (x86)\\Mozilla Firefox\\firefox.exe' print(webbrowser._tryorder) webbrowser.register('firefox', None, webbrowser.BackgroundBrowser(ffpath), 1) print(webbrowser._tryorder) ff = webbrowser.get('firefox') ff.open("http://www.google.com")

[snippsat]

Im not too sure about windows but you may have to register it?

Think the simplest way on Windows is to change default browser in Windows 10.

>>> import webbrowser >>> webbrowser._tryorder ['windows-default', 'C:\\Program Files (x86)\\Internet Explorer\\IEXPLORE.EXE']

If windows-default is set to Chrome then webbrowser open in Chrome.

[Truman]

Im not too sure about windows but you may have to register it?

import webbrowser ffpath = 'C:\\Program Files (x86)\\Mozilla Firefox\\firefox.exe' print(webbrowser._tryorder) webbrowser.register('firefox', None, webbrowser.BackgroundBrowser(ffpath), 1) print(webbrowser._tryorder) ff = webbrowser.get('firefox') ff.open("http://www.google.com")

this is what I get

Error:
['windows-default', 'C:\\Program Files (x86)\\Internet Explorer\\IEXPLORE.EXE'] Traceback (most recent call last): File "C:\Python36\kodovi\browsers.py", line 3, in <module> wb.register('firefox', None, wb.BackgroundBrowser(ffpath), 1) NameError: name 'ffpath' is not defined

I practise Python on old laptop that has Windows 7. What I did is that I made Firefox a default browser through itself - Tools > Options. It's a simplier option, but I wanted to know is it possible to change a browser through a code.