Issue with Selenium and driver as a variable?

Hi all,

First post here so go easy on me please!

I'm using Selenium VBA to automate Firefox. The site i'm scraping has a limit on the loads per session, so i want to create a number of broswer's and cycle through each in an attempt to manage the load and prevent everything freezing. Anyway, onto the question.

This doesn't work

' Set Up Selenium
Dim A As New SeleniumWrapper.WebDriver
Dim B As New SeleniumWrapper.WebDriver
Dim C As New SeleniumWrapper.WebDriver
Dim D As New SeleniumWrapper.WebDriver
Dim E As New SeleniumWrapper.WebDriver

Sub initiate_browsers()

    ' Number of browsers to create
    Max_Row = Application.WorksheetFunction.CountA(ParameterSheet.Range("E3:E7")) + 2
       
    ' Loop through each
    For i = 3 To Max_Row
        B_variable = ParameterSheet.Range("E" & i).Value
        Call open_browser(Bro_Var:=B_variable)
    Next i

End Sub

' Create Browser
Sub open_browser(ByVal Bro_Var As SeleniumWrapper.WebDriver)

    Bro_Var.Start "firefox", "https://www.google.com/"
    Bro_Var.Open "/"

End Sub

It fails where i pass the variable name ("A") into the second sub where i plan to use it as a variable. Not a value...

stumped?!?!

Thanks for the replies. The code i posted wasn't the cleanest. Let me try and explain myself better.

The code here works and is the normal way of opening a browser using selenium

Dim A As New SeleniumWrapper.WebDriver
A.Start "firefox", "https://www.google.com/"
A.Open "/"

But. I want to put this in a loop passing in what selenium often calls the "driver" as a variable (in the last case "A").
The code below attempts to do that but fails...

' Set Up Selenium
Dim A As New SeleniumWrapper.WebDriver
Dim B As New SeleniumWrapper.WebDriver
Dim C As New SeleniumWrapper.WebDriver
Dim D As New SeleniumWrapper.WebDriver
Dim E As New SeleniumWrapper.WebDriver

Sub initiate_browsers()

    Possible_Browsers = Array("A", "B", "C", "D", "E")
 
    'Loop
    For Each Item In Possible_Browsers
        Call open_browser(Item)
    Next
       
End Sub

' Create Browser
Sub open_browser(Bro_Var)

'    A.Start "firefox", "https://www.google.com/"
'    A.Open "/"

    Bro_Var.Start "firefox", "https://www.google.com/"
    Bro_Var.Open "/"

End Sub

Thanks again for the help

Originally Posted by Norie

How does the code fail?

Run-Time error '424'
Object required

Its like its not recognizing the value "A" being passed as the variable declared?

When declaring your array, a, b, c and d shouldn't be in quotation marks

Originally Posted by Kyle123

When declaring your array, a, b, c and d shouldn't be in quotation marks

That doesn't appear to matter. The "items" are being passed to the second sub.
I just checked with a msgbox.

Of course it matters. You are passing a string to the sub, not an instance of the web driver. You've declared a as a string in your array

Yes that does work thanks!

However, i'm back to my original problem. How can i pull that variable as text from a sheet and then pass that as an instance to the second sub?

.......
B_variable = ParameterSheet.Range("E" & i).Value
call second_sub(B_variable)
.......

I want to be able to do this because, in the sheet i want to log the page loads for each browser.

Just the variable name...
Capture.PNG

Originally Posted by skywriter

What about:

Ha, yes!
That's what i'm doing now - but its not very elegant. Also there is going to be a lot of repeated/redundant code in each select...

Hoping someone here can help with something better!

Originally Posted by Norie

You can't take the values from the sheet and use them to refer to variables in the code.

Even though they will always be the same?
I'm not creating the variable from the sheet.

Originally Posted by Norie

You can't take the values from the sheet and use them to refer to variables in the code.

OK thanks for the help