Web Interaction Start (Labs)

Starts a browser session for remote-controlled web interactions by the Web Interactions node set. These nodes simulate simulate human interactions on a web page and can be used for automated application testing, web crawling and data extraction.

The browser that shall be opened has to be installed on the local system and for Safari, follow Apple's prerequisites instructions. Supported browsers are Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Microsoft Edge and Safari.

If not specified through the advanced configuration, the node will try to find the browser executable at its default path on the system.

For Linux users that installed e.g. Firefox with snap, you might find the location to the firefox binaries at /snap/firefox/current/usr/lib/firefox/firefox-bin

Proxy settings: If you set proxy settings in your AP, the Web Interaction nodes will try to use these settings. Note that Safari will ignore the proxy settings configured in KNIME. Support for authenticated proxies in Chrome or Edge is experimental, other browsers do not support authenticated proxies yet.

Options

Browser Choice

Browser

The browser that will be remote-controlled by KNIME.

Available options:

Executable path

Path to the browser executable e.g. path/to/chrome/chrome.exe.

If not provided, the node will try to find the executable at it's default location.

For Windows: Click on the windows logo on the task bar and search for <browser>.exe. Then copy it's path.

For Apple: Use Finder to select e.g. Google Chrome.app and copy the path to the binary from the package content.

For Linux: Use 'which <browser>' in the terminal to locate the binary. The 'which' command will not find the binary if the browser was installed through snap or similar tool.

Browser Settings

Command line arguments

Not possible for Safari.

List of command line arguments executed at browser start. E.g. for Chrome : --disable-extensions --mute-audio

Use headless browser

Not possible for Safari.

A headless browser is a web browser without a graphical user interface. The browser might behave different to a regular browser due to detection by the web page provider. To prevent this use command line switches to change user agents.

Maximize window

Opens the browser in a maximized window.

It is recommended to start the browser with this flag in order to guarantee equal results when sharing a workflow.

Input Ports

This node has no input ports

Output Ports

Icon

The active browser session to be used within further web interaction nodes.

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Links

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Installation

To use this node in KNIME, install the extension KNIME Python Extension Development (Labs) from the below update site following our NodePit Product and Node Installation Guide:

v5.3

A zipped version of the software site can be downloaded here.

Plugin provider: KNIME AG, Zurich, Switzerland
Plugin version: 5.3.3.v202410291554
On NodePit since: 2024-07-09
Last update: 2024-11-15
KNIME versions: Since v5.2

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