foosion
foosion

Reputation: 7898

Refresh a local web page using Python

I'm using Python to gather some information, construct a very simple html page, save it locally and display the page in my browser using webbrowser.open('file:///c:/testfile.html'). I check for new information every minute. If the information changes, I rewrite the local html file and would like to reload the displayed page.

The problem is that webbrowser.open opens a new tab in my browser every time I run it. How do I refresh the page rather than reopen it? I tried new=0, new=1 and new=2, but all do the same thing. Using controller() doesn't work any better.

I suppose I could add something like < META HTTP-EQUIV="refresh" CONTENT="60" > to the < head > section of the html page to trigger a refresh every minute whether or not the content changed, but would prefer finding a better way.

Exact time interval is not important.

Python 2.7.2, chrome 26.0.1410.64 m, Windows 7 64.

Upvotes: 13

Views: 89489

Answers (8)

PaoloChreif
PaoloChreif

Reputation: 1

After using pip install to install pyautogui use the following:

import pyautogui
import time

for i in range(number of times you want to refresh):
    time.sleep(refreshrate in seconds)
    pyautogui.hotkey('f5')

Upvotes: 0

sharveen
sharveen

Reputation: 1

I have had same issues as you for some reason new=1 , new=0 doesn't work. U may try the code below. It simply open the url, waits for 10 sec then kill the process n repeat.

    from subprocess import Popen
    import time

    while True:
       link = ('https://www.google.com/')
       Popen(['start', 'chrome', link], shell=True)
       time.sleep(10)
       Popen('taskkill /F /IM chrome.exe', shell=True)

Upvotes: 0

Aj463
Aj463

Reputation: 31

Or, you can use the easy auto refresh extension in chrome :D

It allows you to set your own refresh time, fastest being one second!

enter image description here

Upvotes: 0

Prasanth Louis
Prasanth Louis

Reputation: 5056

If you're going to need a refresh on the same tab, you'll need selenium webdriver. After installing selenium using pip, you can use the following code :

from selenium import webdriver
import time
import urllib
import urllib2
    
x = raw_input("Enter the URL")
refreshrate = raw_input("Enter the number of seconds")
refreshrate = int(refreshrate)
driver = webdriver.Firefox()
driver.get("http://"+x)

while True:
    time.sleep(refreshrate)
    driver.refresh()

This will open the URL and refresh the tab every refreshrate seconds

Upvotes: 9

PSP2019
PSP2019

Reputation: 51

I use pyautogui module to refresh the browser page. It's one liner:

import pyautogui

pyautogui.hotkey('f5') #Simulates F5 key press = page refresh

Upvotes: 4

Reece
Reece

Reputation: 8088

The LivePage extension for Chrome. You can write to a file, then LivePage will monitor it for you. You can also optionally refresh on imported content like CSS. Chrome will require that you grant permissions on local file:// urls.

(I'm unaffiliated with the project.)

Upvotes: 0

P_n
P_n

Reputation: 992

Keep it very short, as simple as:

from selenium import webdriver
import time

driver = webdriver.Firefox()

driver.get('URL')
while True:
    time.sleep(20)
    driver.refresh()
driver.quit()

Upvotes: 1

Dan K
Dan K

Reputation: 409

It looks like several people have asked this in the past but here is a link that sums it up.

Python refresh HTML document

But webbrowser.open( url, new=0 ) should open the page in the current window and not initialize a new one.

Upvotes: 0

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