Web scraping: webbrowser issue

[Truman]

I started a new chapter in Automate Boring Stuff with Python called Web Scraping ( and I'm planning to focus on this field so if you have any other useful link you're welcome to share ) but since the start I'm facing an obstacle.
When I run the first code with Python IDLE

import webbrowser
webbrowser.open('http://inventwithpython.com/')

it opens web page pretty fast but when I write a code in notepad++ and try to start a created file in command prompt I receive an error:

Error:
C:\Python36\kodovi>webscrap.py
Warning, log file not found starting a new one
[17, 34, 23, 6, 4, 30, 5]
0.1451710693150684
11716 days, 0:00:00
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "C:\Python36\kodovi\webscrap.py", line 1, in <module>
    import webbrowser
  File "C:\Python36\lib\webbrowser.py", line 532, in <module>
    if shutil.which(browser):
AttributeError: module 'shutil' has no attribute 'which'

Not sure what's going on here...

[Larz60+]

I don't know what you are doing, it works when I try it.

[metulburr]

"which" was added to "shutil" in python 3.3.

So somewhere you are really running python 3.2 or less, not python3.6

[snippsat]

Check if you have named a file shutil.py,if you have rename it.
How it shall look.

λ ptpython
>>> import shutil

>>> shutil.__file__
'c:\\python36\\lib\\shutil.py'

>>> shutil.which
<function which at 0x036F5E40>

>>> help(shutil.which)
Help on function which in module shutil:

which(cmd, mode=1, path=None)
    Given a command, mode, and a PATH string, return the path which
    conforms to the given mode on the PATH, or None if there is no such
    file.

    `mode` defaults to os.F_OK | os.X_OK. `path` defaults to the result
    of os.environ.get("PATH"), or can be overridden with a custom search
    path.

[Truman]

Bingo! After removing shutil.py it works fine.

[metulburr]

A lot of newbies hit that gotcha
https://python-forum.io/Thread-Basic-Python-Gotchas

[Truman]

Thank you for the link, will take a closer look.

regarding webbrowser module it opens web sites with Internet Explorer browser. Any idea how to change that to Firefox or any other browser just not this obsolete one?

[metulburr]

you can see available browsers with webbrowser._tryorder and the order it will try to open them in

>>> import webbrowser as wb
>>> wb._tryorder
['xdg-open', 'gvfs-open', 'x-www-browser', 'firefox', 'google-chrome']
>>> wb.get('firefox').open('https://www.google.com')

Im not too sure about windows but you may have to register it?

import webbrowser
ffpath = 'C:\\Program Files (x86)\\Mozilla Firefox\\firefox.exe'
print(webbrowser._tryorder)
webbrowser.register('firefox', None, webbrowser.BackgroundBrowser(ffpath), 1)
print(webbrowser._tryorder)
ff = webbrowser.get('firefox')
ff.open("http://www.google.com")

[snippsat]

Im not too sure about windows but you may have to register it?

Think the simplest way on Windows is to change default browser in Windows 10.

>>> import webbrowser
>>> webbrowser._tryorder
['windows-default', 'C:\\Program Files (x86)\\Internet Explorer\\IEXPLORE.EXE']

If windows-default is set to Chrome then webbrowser open in Chrome.

[Truman]

Im not too sure about windows but you may have to register it?

import webbrowser
ffpath = 'C:\\Program Files (x86)\\Mozilla Firefox\\firefox.exe'
print(webbrowser._tryorder)
webbrowser.register('firefox', None, webbrowser.BackgroundBrowser(ffpath), 1)
print(webbrowser._tryorder)
ff = webbrowser.get('firefox')
ff.open("http://www.google.com")

this is what I get

Error:
['windows-default', 'C:\\Program Files (x86)\\Internet Explorer\\IEXPLORE.EXE']
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "C:\Python36\kodovi\browsers.py", line 3, in <module>
    wb.register('firefox', None, wb.BackgroundBrowser(ffpath), 1)
NameError: name 'ffpath' is not defined

I practise Python on old laptop that has Windows 7. What I did is that I made Firefox a default browser through itself - Tools > Options. It's a simplier option, but I wanted to know is it possible to change a browser through a code.