Use Selenium with Python Portable - python

My question seems somewhat inane, but I cannot seem to find any resources for what I need to do.
Essentially I'm using my work computer to write python applications in my spare time. I'm using Python Portable (syntax version 3.2) because I do not have administrative access and can't do things with path variables etc.
How (if possible) do I install or import selenium so I can use it in Python Portable?
Thanks all!

Based on answer found Importing modules on portable python
and How to install external libraries with Portable Python?
Check for what import sys; print sys.path says?
It displays the list of directories and zipfiles where portable python looks for modules to import. Just copy your modules into one of those directories or zipfiles, or sys.path.append('/whatever/dir') if you have your modules in /whatever/dir and want to keep them there (the latter approach will last only for the current session, be it interactive or a script's execution).
Also on their FAQs
You don’t have package I need, can I add it?
For simpler packages you can use easy install or even extract them in site-packages folder of
the Portable Python distribution. However some packages are installing additional dependencies
in windows system folders - in this case your Portable Python distribution will not work once
you move it to some other workstation. Make sure to do proper testing !

Related

Is it possible to have users not pip install modules and instead include the modules used in a different folder and then import that?

I want to know if I can create a python script with a folder in the same directory with all the assets of a python module, so when someone wants to use it, they would not have to pip install module, because it would import from the directory.
Yes, you can, but it doesn't mean that you should.
First, ask yourself who is suposed to use that code.
If you plan to give it to consumers, it would be a good idea to use a tool like py2exe and create executable file which would include all modules and not allow for code to be changed.
If you plan to share it with another developer, you might want to look into virtual environments and requirements.txt file.
There are multiple reasons why sharing modules is bad idea:
It is harder to update modules later, at least without upgrading whole project.
It uses more space on version control, which can create issues on huge projects with hundreds of modules and branches
It might be illegal as some licenses specifically forbid including their code in your source code.
The pip install of some module might do different things depending on operating system version or installed packages. The modules on your machine might be suboptimal on someone else's machine, and in some instances might not even work.
And probably more that I can't think of right now.
The only situation where I saw this being unavoidable was when the module didn't support python implementation the application was running on. The module was changed, and its source was put under lib folder with the rest of the libraries.
I think you can add the directory with python modules into PYTHONPATH. Then people want to use those modules just need has this envvar set.
https://docs.python.org/3/using/cmdline.html#envvar-PYTHONPATH

Portable Python Script with Module

I'm new to using python modules.
I'm currently working on a python 2.7 script that will be deployed to many remote computers (which have python 2.7 on them). The problem is that the script needs to use a module, which I am not allowed to install on those computers.
I'm wondering if it is possible to include the module files in the same package as my script (possibly have them compiled first), and then have the script import the library from that local folder, thus achieving a "portable" script.
If that is possible, how would I go about doing that?
Specifics: I'm running 2.7.11 on Windows needing to use Paramiko.
I'm asking this question because the similar questions that I can find either do not answer mine, or expect me to be familiar with core python structures with which I am not. I also DON'T want to include the entirety of python and then install the module onto that, something I see is often called Portable Python. I just want to send my script and the module and nothing more.
Many thanks!
To install modules in a specific directory, you can try pip install module --target=.
By default python search for those modules in same directory as the script first, then, if not available, it will search for python install lib files.

Proper way of adding module search path on Windows for Python standalone apps?

I am developing a plugin for a multi-platform Python program (Deluge). My plugin needs to import some modules which aren't available by default (in my case, the requests module).
On Linux, everything works flawlessly assuming the required modules are installed beforehand (e.g. via pip).
On Windows, the program makes use of python27.dll which comes as part of the installer, so importing modules - even those available on the local Python installation (verified via interpreter) - yields an import error.
I've seen the answers to this question, but I'd like to know if there is a proper way of adding module search paths for Python on Windows specifically. Is it safe to assume C:\Python27\Lib\site-packages will point me to the local Python installation's modules?
EDIT: Is there a different method I could incorporate for using "external" modules? Could I perhaps package other modules into my final .egg file? Not just plain Python, but more sophisticated modules like requests which need to be properly built and may even rely on other modules.

Include python library with program distribution

Is there a way to distribute a python library with an application, so that it can be run with out any installation? The app is primarily going to be used in a computer lab, where users do not have permission to install global libraries. Ideally, users would simply be able to unzip a folder and run the app. The following can be assumed:
The python interpreter is present
Linux operating system
The specific library I need is matplotlib, but I would like to find a generic solution. I've looked at programs like PyInstaller, but they create very large programs that are slow to start. They also include a python interpreter, which is unnecessary.
Firstly, p2exe is Windows only.
In principle you can put all of you libraries into the ZIP file so they get expanded in place with thie application. At most you may need to adjust the PYTHONPATH variable to point at the lib's location.
There is no technical difference between modules installed on the path and in the system's python installation.
Have you looked at cxfreeze?

Deploy Python programs on Windows and fetch big library dependencies

I have some small Python programs which depend on several big libraries, such as:
NumPy & SciPy
matplotlib
PyQt
OpenCV
PIL
I'd like to make it easier to install these programs for Windows users. Currently I have two options:
either create huge executable bundles with PyInstaller, py2exe or similar tool,
or write step-by-step manual installation instructions.
Executable bundles are way too big. I always feel like there is some magic happening, which may or may not work the next time I use a different library or a new library version. I dislike wasted space too. Manual installation is too easy to do wrong, there are too many steps: download this particular interpreter version, download numpy, scipy, pyqt, pil binaries, make sure they all are built for the same python version and the same platform, install one after another, download and unpack OpenCV, copy its .pyd file deep inside Python installation, setup environment variables and file asssociations... You see, few users will have the patience and self-confidence to do all this.
What I'd like to do: distribute only a small Python source and, probably, an installation script, which fetches and installs all the missing dependencies (correct versions, correct platform, installs them in the right order). That's a trivial task with any Linux package manager, but I just don't know which tools can accomplish it on Windows.
Are there simple tools which can generate Windows installers from a list of URLs of dependencies1?
1 As you may have noticed, most of the libraries I listed are not installable with pip/easy_install, but require to run their own installers and modify some files and environment variables.
npackd exists http://code.google.com/p/windows-package-manager/ It could be done through here or use distribute (python 3.x) or setuptools (python 2.x) with easy_install, possibly pip (don't know it's windows compatibility). But I would choose npackd because PyQt and it's unusual setup for pip/easy_install (doesn't play with them nicely, using a configure.py instead of setup.py). Though you would have to create your own repo for npackd to use for some of them. I forget what is contributed in total for python libs with it.
AFAIK there is no tool (and I'd assume you googled), so you must make one yourself.
Fetching the proper library versions seems simple enough -- using python's ftplib you can fetch the proper installers for every library. How would you know which version is compatible with the user's python? You can store different lists of download URLs, each for a different python version (this method came off the top of my head and there is probably a better way; not that it matters much if it's simple and it works).
After you figure out how to make each installer run, you can py2exe your installer script, and even use it to fetch the program itself.
EDIT
Some Considerations
There are a couple of things that popped into my mind just as I posted:
First, some pseudocode (how I would approach it, anyway)
#first, we check modules
try:
import numpy
except ImportError:
#flag numpy for installation
#lather, rinse repeat for all dependencies
#next we check version compatibility -- note that if a library version you need
#is not backwards-compatible, you're in DLL hell, and there is little we can do.
<insert version-checking code here>
#once you have your unavailable dependencies, you install them
import ftplib
<all your file-downloading here>
#now you install. sorry I can't help you here.
There are a few things you can do to make your utility reusable --
put all URL lists, minimum version numbers, required library names etc in config files
Write a script which helps you set up an installer
Py2exe the installer-maker-script
Sell it
Even better, release it under GPL so we can all feast upon fruits of your labours.
I have a similar need as you, but in addition I need the packaged application to work on several platforms. I'm currently exploring the currently available solutions, here are a few interesting ones:
Use SnakeBasket, which wraps around Pip and add a recursive dependency resolution plus a heuristic to choose the right version when there are conflicts.
Package all dependencies as an egg, but not your sourcecode which will still be editable: https://stackoverflow.com/a/528064/1121352
Package all dependencies in a zip file and directly import the modules on the fly: Cross-platform alternative to py2exe or http://davidf.sjsoft.com/mirrors/mcmillan-inc/install1.html
Using buildout: http://www.buildout.org/en/latest/install.html
Using virtualenv with virtualenv-tools (instead of "relocate")
If your main problem when freezing your code using PyInstaller or similar is that you end up with a big single file, you can customize the process so that you get several files, one for each dependency, instead of one big executable.
I will update here if I find something that fills my bill.

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