How to save as PDF on Chrome using Selenium

Question

I am trying to automate "Save as PDF" of Chrome using selenium. As far as I know, It is not supported by Selenium. Therefore, I am trying to write my own piece of code. I am currently having an issue, that is, by clicking on the Print button on my webpage, it opens a new window with a printable area. I am trying to switch to this window using SwitchTo command. But it times out every time. How do I solve this?

Answer 1

Hey, Vaishnavi! You could try to disable the Chrome PDF plugin and download the promt window with desired capabilities. Something like this:

DesiredCapabilities cap = DesiredCapabilities.chrome();
cap.setCapability("download.default_directory","C:");
cap.setCapability("download.prompt_for_download","false");
cap.setCapability("directory_upgrade","true");
cap.setCapability("plugins.plugins_disabled","Chrome PDF Viewer");

WebDriver driver = new ChromeDriver(cap);

Or you can add the options.AddArgument("---printing"); to automatically click the print button.

This is working for me. For further understanding, you can refer to the Selenium Course.

Hope this was helpful

Comments

if u are using chrome in head mode then u can use robotjs to save that file.

---

Hi Akshansh, using robotjs to save or download a file in chrome head mode, can be done only if you are well-versed with node.js. As per the question's requirement, this automation needs to be done using Selenium and not using any JS framework. 

---

Hello Akshansh can you please explain in-detail or show some example, how robotjs can be used to download a file in chrome browser?

---

tell me more about this options.AddArgument("---printing");

---

Hi, @Rj,

Could you please share your query in detail as it's very tough to find the relevance of your query asked,. Kindly share your workaround.

Answer 2

Vaishanvi,

Select  ID  selected dropdown or it may pass with DropDown.selectByVisibleText("Save as PDF");orDropDown.selectByIndex(1)