When automating tasks with python scripts, you can hit a wall with SSO and oauth2. Creating a local chrome profile in your XDG data directory can allow one SSO login per work day and your python scripts can re-use the sessions.

tldr

Set your chrome options user-data-dir and profile-directory to a local directory under your control to persist SSO/sessions across script runs.

import os
from selenium import webdriver
from selenium.webdriver.chrome.options import Options

home_dir = os.getenv('HOME')
profile_dir = home_dir + '/.local/share/chrome/profile'

chrome_options = Options()
chrome_options.add_argument(r'user-data-dir=' + profile_dir)
chrome_options.add_argument(r'profile-directory=Automation')

driver = webdriver.Chrome(options=chrome_options)

# do some driver/DOM automation
driver.close()

A simple view of chrome profiles

The profile path is where chrome saves passwords, sessions, history, etc.

Building a profile for autmation scripts

We can build a chrome profile for chromedriver and selenium to (re-)use generated session tokens, etc.

import os
from selenium.webdriver.chrome.options import Options

home_dir = os.getenv('HOME')
profile_dir = home_dir + '/.local/share/chrome/profile'

chrome_options = Options()
chrome_options.add_argument(r'user-data-dir=' + profile_dir)
chrome_options.add_argument(r'profile-directory=Automation')

This setups a profile directory at ./local/share/chrome/profile in our home directory. Ideally, you can make this directory more dynamic based on your needs. Check out XDG Base Directory Specs for some cross-platform inspiration.

Using our profile with our chromedriver

from selenium import webdriver

driver = webdriver.Chrome(options=chrome_options)

# do some driver/DOM automation

driver.close()

Why can’t we use my normal chrome profile

Unfortunately, as far as I can tell, two chrome processes can’t use the same profile at the same time. Furthermore, having chromedriver/selenium use your regular chrome profile can cause problems. I made one of my profiles unusuable trying to do this.

Debugging Notes

If SSO/Sessions do not seem to persist across python script runs. A simple way to check that the profile path is correct is to not close the driver automatically. And visit chrome://version in the spawned chrome window.