python selenium, find out when a download has completed?

I've used selenium to initiate a download. After the download is complete, certain actions need to be taken, is there any simple method to find out when a download has complete? (I am using the FireFox driver)

I came across this problem recently. I was downloading multiple files at once and had to build in a way to timeout if the downloads failed.

The code checks the filenames in some download directory every second and exits once they are complete or if it takes longer than 20 seconds to finish. The returned download time was used to check if the downloads were successful or if it timed out.

import time
import os

def download_wait(path_to_downloads):
    seconds = 0
    dl_wait = True
    while dl_wait and seconds < 20:
        time.sleep(1)
        dl_wait = False
        for fname in os.listdir(path_to_downloads):
            if fname.endswith('.crdownload'):
                dl_wait = True
        seconds += 1
    return seconds

I believe that this only works with chrome files as they end with the .crdownload extension. There may be a similar way to check in other browsers.

Edit: I recently changed the way that I use this function for times that .crdownload does not appear as the extension. Essentially this just waits for the correct number of files as well.

def download_wait(directory, timeout, nfiles=None):
    """
    Wait for downloads to finish with a specified timeout.

    Args
    ----
    directory : str
        The path to the folder where the files will be downloaded.
    timeout : int
        How many seconds to wait until timing out.
    nfiles : int, defaults to None
        If provided, also wait for the expected number of files.

    """
    seconds = 0
    dl_wait = True
    while dl_wait and seconds < timeout:
        time.sleep(1)
        dl_wait = False
        files = os.listdir(directory)
        if nfiles and len(files) != nfiles:
            dl_wait = True

        for fname in files:
            if fname.endswith('.crdownload'):
                dl_wait = True

        seconds += 1
    return seconds

There is no built-in to selenium way to wait for the download to be completed.

The general idea here would be to wait until a file would appear in your "Downloads" directory.

This might either be achieved by looping over and over again checking for file existence:

• Check and wait until a file exists to read it

Or, by using things like watchdog to monitor a directory:

• How to watch a directory for changes?
• Monitoring contents of files/directories?

import os
import time

def latest_download_file():
      path = r'Downloads folder file path'
      os.chdir(path)
      files = sorted(os.listdir(os.getcwd()), key=os.path.getmtime)
      newest = files[-1]

      return newest

fileends = "crdownload"
while "crdownload" == fileends:
    time.sleep(1)
    newest_file = latest_download_file()
    if "crdownload" in newest_file:
        fileends = "crdownload"
    else:
        fileends = "none"

This is a combination of a few solutions. I didn't like that I had to scan the entire downloads folder for a file ending in "crdownload". This code implements a function that pulls the newest file in downloads folder. Then it simply checks if that file is still being downloaded. Used it for a Selenium tool I am building worked very well.

I know its too late for the answer, though would like to share a hack for future readers.

You can create a thread say thread1 from main thread and initiate your download here. Now, create some another thread, say thread2 and in there ,let it wait till thread1 completes using join() method.Now here,you can continue your flow of execution after download completes.

Still make sure you dont initiate your download using selenium, instead extract the link using selenium and use requests module to download.

Download using requests module

For eg:

def downloadit():
     #download code here    

def after_dwn():
     dwn_thread.join()           #waits till thread1 has completed executing
     #next chunk of code after download, goes here

dwn_thread = threading.Thread(target=downloadit)
dwn_thread.start()

metadata_thread = threading.Thread(target=after_dwn)
metadata_thread.start()

As answered before, there is no native way to check if download is finished. So here is a helper function that does the job for Firefox and Chrome. One trick is to clear the temp download folder before start a new download. Also, use native pathlib for cross-platform usage.

from pathlib import Path

def is_download_finished(temp_folder):
    firefox_temp_file = sorted(Path(temp_folder).glob('*.part'))
    chrome_temp_file = sorted(Path(temp_folder).glob('*.crdownload'))
    downloaded_files = sorted(Path(temp_folder).glob('*.*'))
    if (len(firefox_temp_file) == 0) and \
       (len(chrome_temp_file) == 0) and \
       (len(downloaded_files) >= 1):
        return True
    else:
        return False