aiohttp_chromium

aiohttp-like interface to chromium

based on selenium_driverless to bypass cloudflare

status

working prototype

usage

aiohttp_chromium is a drop-in replacement for aiohttp

import asyncio

#import aiohttp
import aiohttp_chromium as aiohttp

async def main():
    async with aiohttp.ClientSession() as session:
        async with session.get('http://httpbin.org/get') as resp:
            print(resp.status)
            print(await resp.text())

asyncio.run(main())

see also

• aiohttp docs
• test.py

why

handling file downloads with selenium is too verbose, and too complex to integrate into selenium, so this is a wrapper for selenium

i wanted a "stupid http client", so it has the same interface as aiohttp.client, and handling web pages has lower priority, so the selenium interface is hidden in response._driver

known issues

chromium window is stealing focus

when creating new tabs, or when switching between tabs, the chromium window is grabbing focus

this is an issue with the window manager

by default (_headless=False, _prevent_focus_stealing=True) this is already fixed in _enable_prevent_focus_stealing_kde for the KDE plasma desktop

manual fix on the KDE plasma desktop: KWin focus stealing prevention: window titlebar → rightclick → more actions → special settings for this window → add property → prevent unwanted activation → level: extreme → apply

example KDE config file ~/.config/kwinrulesrc

[General]
count=1
rules=28ef9b3f-6f35-4fbf-b2c6-b06d0fd959e3

[28ef9b3f-6f35-4fbf-b2c6-b06d0fd959e3]
Description=aiohttp_chromium: prevent focus stealing
clientmachine=localhost
fsplevel=4
fsplevelrule=2
types=1
windowrole=browser
windowrolematch=1
wmclass=chromium-browser \(/run/user/1000/fetch\-subs\-[0-9]{8}T[0-9]{6}\.[0-9]+Z/chromium\-user\-data\) Chromium-browser
wmclasscomplete=true
wmclassmatch=3

/run/user/1000/fetch\-subs\-[0-9]{8}T[0-9]{6}\.[0-9]+Z/chromium\-user\-data is a regex for the chromium user-data directory path which is the tempdir argument for ClientSession

chromium seems to have no command line switch to disable this focus-grabbing

possible solutions

• run chromium in a LD_PRELOAD wrapper
• binary patching of the chromium executable
• configure the window manager
  • done for KDE plasma

todo

• remove tempfiles on session close and on error
• add support for streams: request streams, response streams
  • currently, session.get only works for "short and small" requests and responses, but not for infinite streams
  • implementing this is non-trivial, because chromium does not expose streams over the Chrome DevTools Protocol (CDP)
  • https://github.com/kaliiiiiiiiii/Selenium-Driverless/issues/123
    • i guess this is very deliberate sabotage, to prevent "abusing" chromium as a generic http client, which is pretty much what we are trying to do here...
  • https://github.com/wkeeling/selenium-wire/issues/656#issuecomment-1848393185
    • sounds like we need either/or: a patched version of chromium, or a dynamic analysis tool like frida to insert hooks into the chromium binary ... to pipe all requests and responses through a local http proxy, for passive tracing and active intercepting of https traffic
    • tracing https traffic with frida
      • https://gaiaslastlaugh.medium.com/frida-as-an-alternative-to-network-tracing-5173cfbd7a0b
      • https://andydavies.me/blog/2019/12/12/capturing-and-decrypting-https-traffic-from-ios-apps/
      • https://stackoverflow.com/questions/46711786/android-hooking-https-traffic-using-frida
      • https://frida.re/docs/frida-trace/
  • https://groups.google.com/g/chrome-debugging-protocol/c/w65z0cMqgvc - Fetch.fulfillRequest and (very) long body
    • there's no streaming support for Fetch network interception
    • there is Fetch.takeResponseBodyAsStream and IO.read, but not Fetch.giveResponseBodyAsStream and IO.write
    • there is Network.takeResponseBodyForInterceptionAsStream and IO.read, but not Network.giveResponseBodyForInterceptionAsStream and IO.write
    • google has hidden the discussion: "You don't have permission to access this content. For access, try contacting the group's owners and managers"
      • see snapshot from archive.org 2024-06-23
      • hey google? thanks for reminding us that google is a bunch of fascists, engaging in sabotage and censorship
  • https://issues.chromium.org/issues/332570739 - Streaming body for Fetch.fulfillRequest() CDP API
    • Fetch.fullfillRequest() only provides an option to set the 'body' response as a base64-encoded string. Of course, this does not work well for larger response body. Similar to the streaming takeResponseBodyAsStream(), it would be great if there was a fullfillRequest() option with a stream, fullfillRequestWithStream()
      • Perhaps this could be done by expanding the IO APIs to have a IO.write() option that allows sending a streaming data to the browser. I realize this is probably fairly low-priority, but would make Fetch request interception more efficient, especially when dealing with larger responses/chunked response of unknown size, etc...
    • The feature request makes sense but currently it is a low priority for us.
    • see snapshot
• graphical interface where the user can solve challenges: captchas, unexpected responses, ...
• integration with captcha solving services
• remove unfree dependencies
  • selenium_driverless - cc by-nc-sa license
    • selenium_driverless is a high-level wrapper for the Chrome DevTools Protocol (CDP)
    • NOT based on chromedriver binary, because chromedriver is detected by cloudflare
  • see also Awesome Chrome DevTools # Libraries for driving the protocol (or a layer above)
    • https://github.com/pyppeteer/pyppeteer - 3K stars
    • https://github.com/fake-name/ChromeController - 200 stars
    • https://github.com/chazkii/chromewhip - 120 stars
• grep -r -w FIXME src/
• grep -r -w TODO src/

keywords

• web scraper
• chromium
• aiohttp
• web scraping
• asyncio
• bypass cloudflare
• headful scraper
• headful web scraper
• headful chromium
• gui scripting
• headful webscraper
• selenium driverless

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