workaround for selenium to save the goddamn session / profile completely on firefox / geckodriver --- selenium firefox geckodriver persistent profile

selenium-save-profile-session.py

#   Selenium does not use the given profile, but copies it, and uses a temporary profile.
#   As a result, new cookies and sessions etc. are not saved.
#   To fix it, we get the actual profile firefox is using, kill firefox manually so geckodriver
#   doesn't delete profile data. Copying the profile when it's being used is generally not a good idea.
#   After killing firefox profile and databases are unlocked, we copy the "temporary" profile
#   to our old profile.
#
#   driver.profile doesn't provide the actual temporary profile, but another copy of it. And firefox
#   does not use that one. that's why I got it from process list.
#
#   Note that it works for Linux, you can implement process things to Windows easily I guess


from selenium import webdriver
from selenium.webdriver.firefox.options import Options
from selenium.webdriver import Firefox
import random, psutil, shutil, os, time


# can be a new folder
profile_path = "/tmp/persistent_profile"

if not os.path.isdir(profile_path):
	os.mkdir(profile_path)


firefox_profile = webdriver.FirefoxProfile(profile_path)
options = Options()
options.profile = firefox_profile

# add a random thing so we can distinguish the firefox process
distinguishkey = "-persistentprofileworkaround"+str(random.randint(111111,999999))
options.add_argument(distinguishkey)

driver = webdriver.Firefox(options=options, executable_path="geckodriver")


# do web stuff here

#driver.get("http://localhost/cookie.php")
#time.sleep(1)
#driver.get("http://localhost/cookie.php")
#time.sleep(1)
#driver.get("http://localhost/cookie.php")



for pid in psutil.pids():
	try:
		cmdline = open("/proc/"+str(pid)+"/cmdline", "r").read()
		if distinguishkey in cmdline:
		  profile = cmdline.split('-profile')[1].split(' ')[0].replace('\x00', '')
		  break
	except:
		pass
else:
	print('cannot find firefox pid')
	exit()

psutil.Process(pid).kill() # kill firefox (nicely) and unlock profile lock
if os.path.isdir(profile_path):
	shutil.rmtree(profile_path)
shutil.copytree(profile, profile_path, symlinks=True) # copy the new profile to profile_path, don't resolve "lock" symlink

try:
  driver.quit() # will throw an error because we killed firefox
except:
  pass

# cleanup
if os.path.isdir(profile):
	shutil.rmtree(profile)
if os.path.isdir(driver.profile.tempfolder):
	shutil.rmtree(driver.profile.tempfolder)