"OSError: Chromium downloadable not found at" when using requests_html module in python

The requests_html module uses pyppeteer to handle its web automation. For whatever reason, the default executable url that pyppeteer downloads chromium from is no longer working – it now requires a key. Normally, you’d be able to specify an executable path for pyppeteer to use but as you can see below, requests_html doesn’t give any option for you to specify your own executablePath argument to pyppeteer.launch.

Part of the BaseSession class in requests_html

class BaseSession(requests.Session):
    @property
    async def browser(self):
        if not hasattr(self, "_browser"):
            self._browser = await pyppeteer.launch(ignoreHTTPSErrors=not(self.verify), headless=True, args=self.__browser_args)

        return self._browser

The best thing to do would be to post a new issue on the requests_html github and ask them to allow you to pass your own executable path when creating a Session.

Alternatively, you could switch to using pyppeteer directly rather than through requests_html. This will give you full control over the Chromium executable path and other configuration options.

Here’s a basic example of how to use pyppeteer itself to render a webpage:

import asyncio
from pyppeteer import launch

async def render_page(url):

    browser = await launch(
        headless=True,
        executablePath='/path/to/your/chromium')

    page = await browser.newPage()
    await page.goto(url)

    content = await page.content()
    await browser.close()

    return content

# Run the function and fetch the page content
rendered_html = asyncio.get_event_loop().run_until_complete(
    render_page("https://www.google.com"))
print(rendered_html)

In this case you’d replace '/path/to/your/chromium' with with path to a locally installed chrome or chromium binary. You can download one from the chromium website.