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Selenium is a powerful web automation and testing tool. We use Selenium to write scripts, which can control the web browser and perform specific actions.

In this guide, we will use Python to write a script that will automatically open and close websites in new tabs.

Install Selenium and Chrome WebDriver

To install Selenium, we use the following command.

#Python 3.x
pip install selenium

ChromeDriver is another executable file that Selenium WebDriver uses to interact with Chrome. If we want to automate tasks on the Chrome web browser, we also need to install ChromeDriver.

Depending on the version of Chrome browser, we need to select a compatible driver for it. Here are the steps to install and configure the Chrome driver:

1. Click this link. Download the Chrome driver based on your Chrome browser version and operating system type.
2. If you want to find the version of the Chrome browser, click the three dots in the upper right corner of Chrome, click Help, and select About Google Chrome. You can check the Chrome version in the about section.
3. Extract the zip file and run the Chrome driver.

Opening tabs in a browser using Selenium Python

We create a WebDriver instance in the following code and specify the path to the Chrome driver. We then get()set the URL of the target website using the method with the driver instance.

It will open the target website in the Chrome browser.

Sample code:

# Python 3.x
from selenium import webdriver

driver = webdriver.Chrome(r"E:\download\chromedriver.exe")
driver.get("https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-personality-testing-2795420")

Output:

Open a new tab in your browser using Selenium Python

To open a new tab in the same browser window, we will use the JavaScript executor. It execute_script()executes JavaScript commands using the method.

We pass the JavaScript command as a parameter to this method. We will use window.open()the command to open another tab in the window.

The window handle stores the unique address of a window opened in a web browser. switch_to_window()The method switches to the specified window address.

1Represents the address of the second window. Finally, we'll use get()the method to provide the URL of the new website.

Sample code:

# Python 3.x
from selenium import webdriver

driver = webdriver.Chrome(r"E:\download\chromedriver.exe")
driver.get("https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-personality-testing-2795420")
driver.execute_script("window.open('');")
driver.switch_to.window(driver.window_handles[1])
driver.get(
    "https://www.indeed.com/career-advice/career-development/types-of-personality-test"
)

Output:

Close a browser tab using Selenium Python

We will use the method in our driver program close()to close the tab.

Sample code:

# Python 3.x
from selenium import webdriver

driver = webdriver.Chrome(r"E:\download\chromedriver.exe")
url = "https://www.16personalities.com/free-personality-test"
driver.get(url)
driver.close()

Close one tab and switch to another in the browser using Selenium Python

In the following code using Selenium, we have opened a URL in a tab. We open another tab and switch_to.window(driver.window_handles[1])switch to it using .

A new tab will open with the specified URL. We will now close()close this tab using the method and switch_to.window(driver.window_handles[0])switch back to the previous tab using the method.

Sample code:

# Python 3.x
from selenium import webdriver

driver = webdriver.Chrome(r"E:\download\chromedriver.exe")
url = "https://www.16personalities.com/free-personality-test"
driver.get(url)
driver.execute_script("window.open('');")
driver.switch_to.window(driver.window_handles[1])
driver.get("https://www.16personalities.com/personality-types")
driver.close()
driver.switch_to.window(driver.window_handles[0])

Output: