Error encountered: Circular reference issue was encountered when attempting to retrieve navigator.plugins with the use of Selenium and Python

Question

Error encountered: Circular reference issue was encountered when attempting to retrieve navigator.plugins with the use of Selenium and Python

I'm attempting to access the value of navigator.plugins from a Selenium-driven ChromeDriver initiated google-chrome Browsing Context.

Using google-chrome-devtools, I am able to retrieve navigator.userAgent and navigator.plugins as shown below:

https://i.sstatic.net/J7NQ3.png

However, when using Selenium's execute_script() method, I can extract the navigator.userAgent successfully, but trying to access navigator.plugins results in a circular reference error:

Code Block:

from selenium import webdriver 

options = webdriver.ChromeOptions() 
options.add_argument("start-maximized")
driver = webdriver.Chrome(options=options, executable_path=r'C:\WebDrivers\chromedriver.exe')
driver.get("https://www.google.com/")
print("userAgent: "+driver.execute_script("return navigator.userAgent;"))
print("plugins: "+driver.execute_script("return navigator.plugins;"))

Console Output:

userAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/83.0.4103.116 Safari/537.36
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "C:\Users\Soma Bhattacharjee\Desktop\Debanjan\PyPrograms\navigator_properties.py", line 19, in <module>
    print("vendor: "+driver.execute_script("return navigator.plugins;"))
  File "C:\Python\lib\site-packages\selenium\webdriver\remote\webdriver.py", line 636, in execute_script
    'args': converted_args})['value']
  File "C:\Python\lib\site-packages\selenium\webdriver\remote\webdriver.py", line 321, in execute
    self.error_handler.check_response(response)
  File "C:\Python\lib\site-packages\selenium\webdriver\remote\errorhandler.py", line 242, in check_response
    raise exception_class(message, screen, stacktrace)
selenium.common.exceptions.JavascriptException: Message: javascript error: circular reference
  (Session info: chrome=83.0.4103.116)

I have read about dealing with circular reference errors, but I am uncertain about how to resolve it in this particular context.

Example of a circular reference in Javascript?
Detecting and fixing circular references in JavaScript
Is circular reference between objects a bad practice?

Could someone assist me in retrieving the value of navigator.plugins please?

javascript selenium selenium-webdriver navigator circular-reference

Answer 1

Answer №1

When extracting non-primitive data structures from a browser realm, there may arise a serialization glitch. Upon examination of the structure of a single plugin, it becomes evident that it possesses a recursive nature which poses challenges for the serializer. https://i.sstatic.net/MJzr3.png

If you require a list of plugins, consider returning a serialized string separated by newlines and then splitting it using a newline character in the Python realm.

Here is an example:

plugins = driver.execute_script("return Array.from(navigator.plugins).map(({name}) => name).join('\n');").split('\n')

Answer 2

When extracting non-primitive data structures from a browser realm, there may arise a serialization glitch. Upon examination of the structure of a single plugin, it becomes evident that it possesses a recursive nature which poses challenges for the serializer. https://i.sstatic.net/MJzr3.png

If you require a list of plugins, consider returning a serialized string separated by newlines and then splitting it using a newline character in the Python realm.

Here is an example:

plugins = driver.execute_script("return Array.from(navigator.plugins).map(({name}) => name).join('\n');").split('\n')

Answer 3

Answer №2

I believe the reason for this behavior is related to how navigator.plugins returns a collection known as a PluginArray.

The documentation for the PluginArray provides details about its methods and properties, which helped me create a script that generates a list of plugin names. Feel free to modify it according to your requirements.

print("List of plugins: " + driver.execute_script("var names = []; for(var i = 0; i < navigator.plugins.length; i++) { names.push(navigator.plugins[i].name); }; return names.join();"))

Answer 4

I believe the reason for this behavior is related to how navigator.plugins returns a collection known as a PluginArray.

The documentation for the PluginArray provides details about its methods and properties, which helped me create a script that generates a list of plugin names. Feel free to modify it according to your requirements.

print("List of plugins: " + driver.execute_script("var names = []; for(var i = 0; i < navigator.plugins.length; i++) { names.push(navigator.plugins[i].name); }; return names.join();"))

Answer 5

Answer №3

Circular Dependencies

When two separate objects pass references to each other, it results in circular dependencies. This type of referencing indicates a strong coupling between the objects, where changes made to one object may require adjustments in the other object as well.

NavigatorPlugins.plugins

The NavigatorPlugins.plugins function retrieves a list of installed plugins in the application through a PluginArray object. This object contains information about the various plugins and allows access to them using methods like item(index) or namedItem("name").

To extract properties from navigator.plugins, you can use the following code snippets:

To retrieve the list of names of the plugins:

print(driver.execute_script("return Array.from(navigator.plugins).map(({name}) => name);"))

Console Output:

['Chrome PDF Plugin', 'Chrome PDF Viewer', 'Native Client']

To fetch the list of filenames of the plugins:

print(driver.execute_script("return Array.from(navigator.plugins).map(({filename}) => filename);"))

Console Output:

['internal-pdf-viewer', 'mhjfbmdgcfjbbpaeojofohoefgiehjai', 'internal-nacl-plugin']

To obtain the list of descriptions of the plugins:

print(driver.execute_script("return Array.from(navigator.plugins).map(({description}) => description);"))

Console Output:
```
['Portable Document Format', '', '']
```

Answer 6

Circular Dependencies

When two separate objects pass references to each other, it results in circular dependencies. This type of referencing indicates a strong coupling between the objects, where changes made to one object may require adjustments in the other object as well.

NavigatorPlugins.plugins

The NavigatorPlugins.plugins function retrieves a list of installed plugins in the application through a PluginArray object. This object contains information about the various plugins and allows access to them using methods like item(index) or namedItem("name").

To extract properties from navigator.plugins, you can use the following code snippets:

To retrieve the list of names of the plugins:

print(driver.execute_script("return Array.from(navigator.plugins).map(({name}) => name);"))

Console Output:

['Chrome PDF Plugin', 'Chrome PDF Viewer', 'Native Client']

To fetch the list of filenames of the plugins:

print(driver.execute_script("return Array.from(navigator.plugins).map(({filename}) => filename);"))

Console Output:

['internal-pdf-viewer', 'mhjfbmdgcfjbbpaeojofohoefgiehjai', 'internal-nacl-plugin']

To obtain the list of descriptions of the plugins:

print(driver.execute_script("return Array.from(navigator.plugins).map(({description}) => description);"))

Console Output:
```
['Portable Document Format', '', '']
```

Error encountered: Circular reference issue was encountered when attempting to retrieve navigator.plugins with the use of Selenium and Python

Answer №1

Answer №2

Answer №3

Circular Dependencies

NavigatorPlugins.plugins

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