Why can chrome store this session data but firefox can not?

Question

So I want to store a Whatsapp Web session in order to not having to scan Whatsapp Web's QR-Code every time. I did it with the following code:

options = webdriver.ChromeOptions()
options.add_argument("--user-data-dir=C:/Users/Pascal/AppData/Local/Google/Chrome/User Data")
browser = webdriver.Chrome(executable_path="C:/Users/Pascal/Desktop/chromedriver.exe", options = options)
browser.get("https://web.whatsapp.com/")

The above code worked perfectly (Chromebrowser) but the following code which is almost the same does not work:

options = webdriver.FirefoxOptions()
options.add_argument("--user-data-dir=C:/Users/Pascal/AppData/Roaming/Mozilla/Firefox/Profiles/iddwgmst.default-release")
browser = webdriver.Firefox(executable_path="C:/Users/Pascal/Desktop/geckodriver.exe", options = options)
browser.get("https://web.whatsapp.com/")

Why does it not work with firefox? The QR-Code comes up every time but I have loaded the firefox profile to the browser/driver so it seems like firefox does not store whatsapp webs data... But then, if I go into whatsapp web in my normal firefox browser, it stores the data again and I don't have to rescan... I am confused by this problem.

I really want it with firefox to be working cause chromedriver does not support emojis :/

Any Ideas?

Firefox differs from Chrome in that they use two locations to store user data. One is in "roaming" and the other in "local". Local is used mainly for temporary files I think... so mayyybe you need that here for an uploaded image file? — pcalkins, Oct 16 '20 at 19:25
in the firefox profile that is inside roaming, there is a folder called "https+++web.whatsapp.com" and in the local there is not... But it doesnt work if I use that one :/ — derpascal, Oct 16 '20 at 20:25
it's possible it's pointing to a temporary file... seems kind of odd though. If that were the case, it'd be in local... but that would be a problem because Geckodriver/Firefox will create it's own folder for use as temp and then clean it up after. — pcalkins, Oct 16 '20 at 21:48

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered Oct 17 '20 at 00:29

I solved it. For Firefox it works with:

profile = webdriver.firefox.firefox_profile.FirefoxProfile("C:/Users/Pascal/AppData/Roaming/Mozilla/Firefox/Profiles/iddwgmst.default-release")
        self.browser = webdriver.Firefox(executable_path = os.path.dirname(os.path.realpath(__file__)) + "\\geckodriver.exe" , firefox_profile = profile)
        self.browser.get("https://web.whatsapp.com/")

But for chrome it works with:

options = webdriver.ChromeOptions()
        options.add_argument("--user-data-dir=C:/Users/Pascal/AppData/Local/Google/Chrome/User Data")
        self.browser = webdriver.Chrome(executable_path = os.path.dirname(os.path.realpath(__file__)) + "\\chromedriver.exe", options = options)
        self.browser.get("https://web.whatsapp.com/")

Here, geckodriver and chromedriver are in the same folder as the main.py

Why can chrome store this session data but firefox can not?

1 Answers1