Helium Python Library

After installation, you can verify that Helium is ready to use by importing it in a Python shell:

from helium import *

To use Helium, you need Python 3 and either Chrome or Firefox installed. It is recommended to use a virtual environment to manage dependencies.

1. Create and activate a virtual environment:

   • Mac/Linux:

     python3 -m venv venv
     source venv/bin/activate

   • Windows:

     python3 -m venv venv
     call venv\scripts\activate.bat

2. Install Helium using pip:

   python -m pip install helium

All public Helium functions are available directly in the helium module. The most common way to use the library is to import everything into the local namespace.

from helium import *

To build the Helium documentation locally, ensure you have python and pip installed. Run the following commands from the project root to install the necessary development dependencies and generate the HTML documentation.

The resulting documentation will be located in the docs/_build/ directory. You can view it by opening docs/_build/index.html in your web browser.

pip install -Ur requirements/docs.txt
make -C docs/ html

It is recommended to use a virtual environment to keep your Helium installation isolated. Follow these steps:

1. Create the virtual environment:

   python3 -m venv venv

2. Activate the environment:

   • On Mac/Linux (bash shell):

     source venv/bin/activate

   • On Windows:

     call venv\Scripts\activate.bat

3. Install Helium inside the activated environment:

   python -m pip install helium

python3 -m venv venv
# On Mac/Linux:
source venv/bin/activate
# On Windows:
call venv\Scripts\activate.bat
python -m pip install helium

To install Helium, ensure you have Python 3 and either Chrome or Firefox installed on your system. You can install the package directly using pip:

pip install helium

A typical Helium script involves starting a browser, navigating to a URL, typing text, clicking elements, and closing the browser.

from helium import *
start_chrome('google.com')
write('helium selenium github')
press(ENTER)
click('mherrmann/helium')
go_to('github.com/login')
write('username', into='Username')
write('password', into='Password')
click('Sign in')
kill_browser()

Helium is a high-level wrapper around Selenium. Because it forwards calls to Selenium, you can freely mix Helium functions with standard Selenium API calls using the driver instance returned by Helium functions like start_chrome() or start_firefox().

# A Helium function:
driver = start_chrome()
# A Selenium API:
driver.execute_script("alert('Hi!');")

You can launch Chrome or Firefox using start_chrome() or start_firefox(). You can optionally pass a URL as the first argument to open immediately. To run the browser without a visible window (useful for automated tasks), set headless=True.

start_chrome('google.com')
start_chrome(headless=True)
start_firefox('google.com', headless=True)