📦 This repository is archived.
It is kept as a personal learning and experimentation project and is no longer actively developed.

Coursera Automation — Personal Selenium Learning Project

Warning

Important Disclaimer

This is a personal, educational automation project created for learning and experimentation with Selenium, browser automation, and UI-driven workflows.

• This project is not affiliated with Coursera.
• It is not intended for commercial use, abuse, or large-scale automation.
• It was built in a controlled environment where access to course content was legitimately provided (e.g., institutional/college access).

Use responsibly and in accordance with all applicable terms of service.

📖 Motivation & Context

This project started as a hands-on learning exercise.

While experimenting with Selenium, I wanted a realistic, stateful, non-trivial website to test:

• Persistent sessions
• Complex navigation flows
• Dynamic DOM updates
• Retry logic and resilience
• Long-running browser automation

Having legitimate institutional access to Coursera via my college, it became a practical sandbox to:

• Explore Selenium deeply.
• Understand how real production UIs behave.
• Build something end-to-end instead of toy scripts.

AI integration was later added purely as an experiment and documented transparently.

🎯 What This Project Is (and Is Not)

✅ What it is

• A learning-focused Selenium automation system
• A personal showcase project
• A real-world example of:
  • Stateful browser automation
  • Modular Python scripting
  • Defensive UI handling
  • Optional AI-assisted workflows

❌ What it is not

• A polished product
• A guaranteed automation tool
• A bot framework
• A Coursera exploit
• Something meant to run unattended forever

⚙️ High-Level Overview

The automation:

1. Opens Coursera using a real Chromium browser.
2. Uses a persistent Chrome profile.
3. Requires manual login once.
4. Navigates through:
   • My Learning
   • In-progress courses
   • Modules and items
5. Handles:
   • Videos
   • Mark-as-complete buttons
   • Optional / completed items
6. Optionally:
   • Detects quizzes
   • Extracts questions
   • Uses AI APIs to propose answers
   • Submits attempts

The emphasis is on realistic browser behavior, not stealth or speed.

🏗️ Core Design Principles

1. Stateful over stateless Uses a real browser profile instead of re-authenticating.
2. Resilient over perfect Retry loops and fallbacks are preferred to brittle logic.
3. Readable over clever Code is intentionally verbose and explicit.
4. Learning-first This repo prioritizes understanding over optimization.

📂 Project Structure

.
├── script.py          # Main entry point and orchestration
├── navigate.py        # Site navigation and course selection
├── course.py          # Course items, videos, completion logic
├── quiz.py            # Quiz detection + AI-assisted solving
├── misc.py            # Utilities (random delays, scrolling)
├── debug.py           # Login & session bootstrap helper
├── requirements.txt   # Python dependencies
├── pyproject.toml     # Project configuration
├── README.md          # Documentation
├── .gitignore         # Git ignore rules
├── chromium/          # (ignored) Portable Chromium binaries
│   ├── chrome.exe
│   └── chromedriver.exe
├── chrome-profile/    # (ignored) Persistent browser session
└── api.json           # (ignored) API keys (dummy or real)

💻 Target Environment

• OS: Windows 10 / 11
• Python: 3.9+
• Browser: Chromium / Chrome
• Driver: ChromeDriver (matching version)

Note: Linux/macOS are not officially supported in this repo, though the logic is portable if paths are adjusted.

📦 Dependencies

Install Python dependencies using:

pip install -r requirements.txt

Key Libraries:

• selenium
• openai (optional, for AI experiments)
• google-generativeai (optional, for AI experiments)

🌐 Browser Setup (Required)

This project expects a portable Chromium setup to ensure environment consistency.

Directory structure:

chromium/
├── chrome.exe
└── chromedriver.exe

PowerShell sanity checks:

Test-Path .\chromium\chrome.exe
Test-Path .\chromium\chromedriver.exe

⚠️ Critical: ChromeDriver version must match the Chromium version.

🔐 Persistent Login Model

This project does not attempt to bypass authentication.

Flow:

1. Browser opens normally.
2. You log in manually.
3. Session data is stored in chrome-profile/.
4. Future runs reuse the session cookie/profile.

This approach reduces flakiness, mimics real usage, and avoids repeated 2FA/login prompts.

🚀 First-Time Setup

Step 1: Create virtual environment (recommended)

python -m venv .venv
.venv\Scripts\activate

Step 2: Install dependencies

pip install -r requirements.txt

Step 3: Initial login

python debug.py

Log in manually when the browser opens, then close the script.

▶️ Running the Automation

python script.py

The script will:

1. Navigate to My Learning.
2. Process incomplete courses.
3. Return to the dashboard.
4. Repeat until nothing remains.

🧠 Automation Flow

Note: If the diagram does not render, view this README on GitHub Desktop or github.com.

graph TD
    A[Start] --> B[Open Coursera]
    B --> C{Login Session Exists?}
    C -- No --> D[Manual Login Required]
    C -- Yes --> E[Navigate to My Learning]
    D -- After Login --> E
    E --> F{Find Incomplete Course}
    F -- None Found --> Z[End]
    F -- Found --> G[Enter Course]
    G --> H[Module Loop]
    H --> I{Item Type?}
    I -- Video --> J[Watch/Skip]
    I -- Reading/Misc --> K[Mark Complete]
    I -- Quiz --> L["AI Solver (Optional)"]
    J --> M[Next Item]
    K --> M
    L --> M
    M -- Item/Module pending --> H
    M -- Reached Course End --> F

Loading

🤖 AI-Assisted Quiz Handling (Optional)

AI integration exists purely for experimentation.

Capabilities:

• Extract quiz questions & options.
• Normalize question text.
• Query AI APIs.
• Fill radio / checkbox / text inputs.
• Submit attempts.

Supported providers:

• OpenAI
• Google Gemini

API Configuration

Create api.json in the root directory:

{
  "api_keys": [
    {
      "key": "YOUR_API_KEY",
      "service": "openai",
      "status": "working",
      "counter": 0
    }
  ]
}

• Multiple keys supported.
• Automatic failover logic.
• Gitignored by default for security.

🛠️ Testing & Diagnostics

View directory structure:

tree /F

Verify Python version:

python --version

Check installed packages:

pip list

Selenium sanity check (PowerShell One-Liner):

python -c "from selenium import webdriver; print('Selenium import OK')"

⚠️ Known Limitations & Philosophy

Error Handling:

• Retries > crashes.
• Logs > silence.
• Expect StaleElementReferenceException and DOM mutations.

Limitations:

• Highly dependent on Coursera’s specific UI classes.
• Global state is used intentionally.
• No concurrency support (Single Threaded).
• Breakage is expected over time.

⚖️ Ethics & License

MIT License Provided as-is, without warranty.

Final Note: If you clone or fork this project, expect to modify CSS selectors. Treat this as a learning artifact, not a finished product.

Happy hacking.

📦 Repository archived
This project is preserved as a personal learning reference and is no longer under active development.