Selenium won’t open a new URL in a new tab in Chrome is an error which is a bug in ChromeDriver that prevents the ctrl key from working.
In this article I am going to explain what happens when you get this error and how you can solve it with a main solution, we will also explore other solutions which can possibly solve the issue.
Explaining Selenium WebDriver Python Problem – Selenium won’t open a new URL in a new tab in Chrome
First of all we need to understand why the error happens at all, the error is caused by a bug in ChromeDriver that prevents the ctrl key from working.
To reproduce the error you can run a simple Selenium script.
#
driver = webdriver.Chrome()
driver.get(url1)
time.sleep(5)
driver.find_element_by_tag_name('body').send_keys(Keys.CONTROL+'t')
url2 = 'https://www.twitter.com'
driver.get(item2)
#
To solve the problem above, I have a couple of solutions which have worked for me, bellow is a detailed explanation of the solutions.
Solution 1 : use switch_to.window().
The error is caused by a bug in ChromeDriver, the bug stopps ctrl/command+T from working.
The first solution is to start by opening a link in a new tab and then use switch_to.window() in order to switch to a new window.
The example bellow shows you how this can be done.
#
driver = webdriver.Chrome()
driver.get("https://www.google.com")
actions = ActionChains(driver) # we open a link in a new window
about = driver.find_element_by_link_text('About')
actions.key_down(Keys.CONTROL).click(about).key_up(Keys.CONTROL).perform()
driver.switch_to.window(driver.window_handles[-1]) # we switch to the window
driver.get("https://www.twitter.com")
#
I hope this works, you can also try the solution bellow.
Solution 2 : use .execute_script().
The second solution is to use .execute_script().
You can do that using the line of code bellow.
#
driver.execute_script("window.open('http://twitter.com', 'new_window')")
#
Then you can switch back to the first tab using .switch_to_window().
#
driver.switch_to_window(driver.window_handles[0])
#
If this solution did not work for you, you can try the next and final solution.
Solution 3 : use driver.maximize_window().
The third and final solution is to maximize chrome, you can do that by using driver.maximize_window()
The snippet of code bellow is a demonstration of how you can use driver.maximize_window().
#
driver = webdriver.Chrome()
driver.maximize_window()
driver.get("https://www.google.com/")
e = driver.find_element_by_tag_name("body")
ActionChains(driver).key_down(Keys.CONTROL).click(e).send_keys("k").key_up(Keys.CONTROL).perform()
#
It is worth to note that key_down(Keys.CONTROL) holds the ctrl key down.
All the above solutions were excellent to solve this problem. I wish you good luck.
The error above was hard to deal with, I spent hours looking for a proper solution or set of solutions.
Summing-up
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Please keep learning and keep coding, cheers. If you want to learn more about Python, please check out the Python Documentation : https://docs.python.org/3/