What can I use to call the OS to open a URL in whatever browser the user has as default? Not worried about cross-OS compatibility; if it works in linux thats enough for me!
-
What os are you looking for since Windows, MacOS and Linux all have a different calling convention.koblas– koblas2010-11-18 16:18:20 +00:00Commented Nov 18, 2010 at 16:18
Add a comment
|
5 Answers
Here is how to open the user's default browser with a given url:
import webbrowser
url = "https://www.google.com/"
webbrowser.open(url, new=0, autoraise=True)
Here is the documentation about this functionality. It's part of Python's stdlibs:
http://docs.python.org/library/webbrowser.html
I have tested this successfully on Linux, Ubuntu 10.10.
6 Comments
leetNightshade
On OS X 10.8.2 with Python 2.7.2 this does not appear to work. However, it works fine on Windows 7 with Python 2.7.3. Also works fine on Ubuntu 12.04 with XFCE 4.8 and Python 2.7.3.
leetNightshade
Okay, on OS X 10.8.2 with Python 2.7.4 this does appear to work. So, annoyingly it probably only reliably works on newer versions of Python.
fatuhoku
I get webbrowser.open(url[, new=0[, autoraise=True]]) ^ SyntaxError: invalid syntax
Josh
I'm using OSX 10.8.4 with Python 2.7.2 and verified it does indeed work. However, if you use the url 'google.com' it fails without error. You need to specify 'google.com'.
Sumit
FWIW, this is what
import antigravity uses: hg.python.org/cpython/file/tip/Lib/antigravity.py |
Personally I really wouldn't use the webbrowser module.
It's a complicated mess of sniffing for particular browsers, which will won't find the user's default browser if they have more than one installed, and won't find a browser if it doesn't know the name of it (eg Chrome).
Better on Windows is simply to use the os.startfile function, which also works on a URL. On OS X, you can use the open system command. On Linux there's xdg-open, a freedesktop.org standard command supported by GNOME, KDE and XFCE.
if sys.platform=='win32':
os.startfile(url)
elif sys.platform=='darwin':
subprocess.Popen(['open', url])
else:
try:
subprocess.Popen(['xdg-open', url])
except OSError:
print 'Please open a browser on: '+url
This will give a better user experience on mainstream platforms. You could fall back to webbrowser on other platforms, perhaps. Though most likely if you're on an obscure/unusual/embedded OS where none of the above work, chances are webbrowser will fail too.
4 Comments
Liquid_Fire
I've just looked at the source for webbrowser, and I'm not sure I agree with you. Only the unix sniffing looks a bit unreliable, and even it should work correctly in KDE or GNOME (it probably could use a patch to use
xdg-open, though xdg-open uses similar sniffing anyway). The win32 implementation, for instance, uses os.startfile() already, and it also has a fallback.
daviewales
The webbrowser module worked for me when I had Safari as my default browser, and also when I had Chrome as my default browser on Mac.
Chronial
Note that webbrowser uses
xdg-open now, too. Thus this answer is outdated on modern python and there is no reason not to use the webbrowser module.
Luc
xdg-open throws an error for data: URLs. Simply running webbrowser.open("data:text/plain,Hello,%20World!") opens the correct browser (Firefox) on my system (Debian 11), though the user needs to refresh the page before it loads due to blog.mozilla.org/security/2017/11/27/…You can use the webbrowser module.
webbrowser.open(url)
Comments
Then how about mixing codes of @kobrien and @bobince up:
import subprocess
import webbrowser
import sys
url = 'http://test.com'
if sys.platform == 'darwin': # in case of OS X
subprocess.Popen(['open', url])
else:
webbrowser.open_new_tab(url)
Comments
Have a look at the webbrowser module.
