How to autorefresh chromeDriver with Selenium?

refresh, selenium

Solution

refresh is a built in command.

driver = webdriver.Chrome()
driver.get("http://www.google.com")
driver.refresh()

If you don't have the chrome driver it can be found here: https://code.google.com/p/chromedriver/downloads/list

Put the binary in the same folder as the python script you're writing. (Or add it to the path or whatever, more information here: https://code.google.com/p/selenium/wiki/ChromeDriver)

edit:

If you want to refresh ever 10 seconds or something, just wrap the refresh line with a loop and a delay. For example:

import time
while(True):
    driver.refresh()
    time.sleep(refresh_time_in_seconds)

If you only want to refresh if the page hasn't changed in the meantime, keep track of the page that you're on. `driver.current_url` is the url of the current page. So putting it all together it would be:

import time
refresh_time_in_seconds = 15
driver = webdriver.Chrome()
driver.get("http://www.google.com")
url = driver.current_url
while(True):
    if url == driver.current_url:
        driver.refresh()
    url = driver.current_url
    time.sleep(refresh_time_in_seconds)

Problem

Previously I have been using chrome Auto Refresh plug in. However, now my code has multiple ChromeDriver instances opening and closing and I cannot use Auto Refresh. Also, it is quite a hassle to install Auto Refresh on new computers. Is there any way to refresh driver (simulate F5 say every 15 seconds if driver does not change remains motionless) with Selenium similar to Google Auto Refresh?

Original source