How to run chrome headless browser - python-3.x

Question

I have been trying to set up chromes headless browser on my mac but I am getting errors.
I tried following these tutorials for reference:
https://intoli.com/blog/running-selenium-with-headless-chrome/
https://duo.com/decipher/driving-headless-chrome-with-python
and using these stackoflow pages
How to get Chromedriver in headless mode to run headless? and selenium.common.exceptions.WebDriverException: Message: 'chromedriver' executable needs to be in PATH error with chrome
The headless browser worked on phantomjs but I know selenium no longer wants us to use this. This is what I am running right now: (almost exactly one the responses on stack overflow)
from selenium import webdriver
from selenium.webdriver.chrome.options import Options
chrome_options = Options()
chrome_options.add_argument("--headless")
driver = webdriver.Chrome(chrome_options=chrome_options)
driver.get("http://www.duo.com")
print("Chrome Browser Initialized in Headless Mode")
this is my response:
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "headless_browser.py", line 47, in <module>
driver = webdriver.Chrome(chrome_options=chrome_options)
File "/Users/BCohen/anaconda3/lib/python3.6/site-packages/selenium/webdriver/chrome/webdriver.py", line 75, in __init__
desired_capabilities=desired_capabilities)
File "/Users/BCohen/anaconda3/lib/python3.6/site-packages/selenium/webdriver/remote/webdriver.py", line 154, in __init__
self.start_session(desired_capabilities, browser_profile)
File "/Users/BCohen/anaconda3/lib/python3.6/site-packages/selenium/webdriver/remote/webdriver.py", line 243, in start_session
response = self.execute(Command.NEW_SESSION, parameters)
File "/Users/BCohen/anaconda3/lib/python3.6/site-packages/selenium/webdriver/remote/webdriver.py", line 312, in execute
self.error_handler.check_response(response)
File "/Users/BCohen/anaconda3/lib/python3.6/site-packages/selenium/webdriver/remote/errorhandler.py", line 242, in check_response
raise exception_class(message, screen, stacktrace)
selenium.common.exceptions.WebDriverException: Message: unknown error: cannot find Chrome binary
(Driver info: chromedriver=2.36.540469 (1881fd7f8641508feb5166b7cae561d87723cfa8),platform=Mac OS X 10.13.2 x86_64)

Answer 1

The error does gives us the hint as follows :
selenium.common.exceptions.WebDriverException: Message: unknown error: cannot find Chrome binary
(Driver info: chromedriver=2.36.540469 (1881fd7f8641508feb5166b7cae561d87723cfa8),platform=Mac OS X 10.13.2 x86_64)
The error says that the ChromeDriver didn't find the Chrome binary in the expected location.
There can be two solutions as follows :
As per the Requirements the Chrome installation needs to be in a definite location.
As an alternative you can pass the absolute path of the Chrome binary through an instance of Options class as follows :
from selenium.webdriver.chrome.options import Options
options = Options()
options.binary_location = "/Applications/Google\ Chrome.app/Contents/MacOS/Google\ Chrome"
Finally while initiating the WebDriver and WebClient you need to send the argument Key executable_path along with the Value chrome_path.
from selenium import webdriver
from selenium.webdriver.chrome.options import Options
options = Options()
options.binary_location = "/Applications/Google\ Chrome.app/Contents/MacOS/Google\ Chrome"
options = Options()
options.add_argument("--headless")
options.add_argument("--no-sandbox")
options.add_argument("start-maximized")
options.add_argument("disable-infobars")
options.add_argument("--disable-extensions")
chrome_path = "/home/ec2-user/chrome/chromedriver"
driver = webdriver.Chrome(executable_path=chrome_path, chrome_options=options)
driver.get("http://www.duo.com")
print("Chrome Browser Initialized in Headless Mode")
Alternative
Invoking Google Chrome Browser in Headless Mode programatically have become much easier with the availability of the method set_headless(headless=True) as follows :
Documentation :
set_headless(headless=True)
Sets the headless argument
Args:
headless: boolean value indicating to set the headless option
Sample Code :
from selenium import webdriver
from selenium.webdriver.chrome.options import Options
options = Options()
options.set_headless(headless=True)
driver = webdriver.Chrome(chrome_options=chrome_options, executable_path=r'C:\path\to\chromedriver.exe')
driver.get("http://google.com/")
print ("Headless Chrome Initialized")
driver.quit()

Answer 2

from selenium import webdriver
from selenium.webdriver.chrome.options import Options
option = Options()
option.headless = True
driver = webdriver.Chrome(executable_path=r'C:\path\to\chromedriver.exe', options = option)