Azure Function in Python running selenium webdriver using a custom docker image

The base Azure Function image does not contain the necessary chromium packages to run selenium webdriver. This project creates a custom docker image with the required libraries such that it can be run as Azure Function.

• For more details, see blog https://towardsdatascience.com/how-to-create-a-selenium-web-scraper-in-azure-functions-f156fd074503

1. Prerequisites

• Docker desktop
• Azure Container Registry
• Azure CLI
• Azure Core Tools version 2.x
• (optional) Visual Studio Code

2. Create custom docker image using the DockerFile in docker desktop

Run the following commands that installs chromium, chrome driver and selenium on top of the Azure Function base image:

$acr_id = "<<your acr>>.azurecr.io"
docker login $acr_id -u <<your username>> -p <<your password>>
docker build --tag $acr_id/selenium .
docker push $acr_id/selenium:latest

3. Create Azure Function using docker image

Run the following commands:

$rg = "<<your resource group name>>"
$loc = "<<your location>>"
$plan = "<<your azure function plan P1v2>>"
$stor = "<<your storage account adhering to function>>"
$fun = "<<your azure function name>>"
$acr_id = "<<your acr>>.azurecr.io"

az group create -n $rg -l $loc
az storage account create -n $stor -g $rg --sku Standard_LRS
az appservice plan create --name $plan --resource-group $rg --sku P1v2 --is-linux
az functionapp create --resource-group $rg --os-type Linux --plan $plan --deployment-container-image-name $acr_id/selenium:latest --name $fun --storage-account $stor

4. Run Azure Function as HTTP trigger

Test the Function in the portal or in your browser. The following code in init.py will return all URLs in the following webpage:

import azure.functions as func
from selenium import webdriver

def main(req: func.HttpRequest) -> func.HttpResponse:

    chrome_options = webdriver.ChromeOptions()
    chrome_options.add_argument('--headless')
    chrome_options.add_argument('--no-sandbox')
    chrome_options.add_argument('--disable-dev-shm-usage')

    driver = webdriver.Chrome("/usr/local/bin/chromedriver", chrome_options=chrome_options)
    driver.get('http://www.ubuntu.com/')
    links = driver.find_elements_by_tag_name("a")