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I am trying to extract NBA players stats using selenium web driver in python and here is my attempt:

from selenium import webdriver
from selenium.webdriver.support.ui import Select


browser = webdriver.Chrome()

browser.get('https://www.basketball-reference.com')

xp_1 = "//select[@id='selector_0' and @name='team_val']"
team = Select(browser.find_element_by_xpath(xp_1))
team.select_by_visible_text('Golden State Warriors')

xp_2 = "//select[@id='selector_0' and @name='1']"
player = Select(browser.find_element_by_xpath(xp_2))
player.select_by_visible_text('Jordan Bell')

The problem I have is there are 4 "Go" buttons in this page and all have the same input features. In other words, the following xpath returns 4 buttons:

//input[@type='submit'and @name="go_button" and @id="go_button" and @value="Go!"]

I unsuccessfully tried adding ancestor as below but it does not return an xpath:

//input[@type='submit' and @name="go_button" and @id="go_button" and @value="Go!"]/ancestor::/form[@id='player_roster']

I appreciate any insight!

A.E
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2 Answers2

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Try below XPAth to select required Go button:

"//input[@value='Go!' and ancestor::form[@id='player_roster']]"

or 

"//form[@id='player_roster']//input[@value='Go!']"

Note that you shouldn't mix single and double quotes in a XPath expression and correct usage of ancestor axis is

//descendant_node/ancestor::ancestor_node
Andersson
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  • @Andersson-Thanks and sorry for my mistake in using ancestor; I am just learning selenium – A.E Nov 18 '18 at 21:27
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You could also switch to CSS selectors and use a descendant combination where you use an parent element to restrict to the appropriate form with Go button 

#player_roster #go_button

That is

browser.find_element_by_css_selector("#player_roster #go_button")

The # is an id selector.

CSS selectors are generally faster than XPath, except in cases of older IE versions. More info.

QHarr
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  • @QHarr-thanks for the suggestion. What are the pros/cons of CSS selector over xpath? – A.E Nov 19 '18 at 17:05
  • The CSS selector is faster than XPath in most instances and generally more robust. https://stackoverflow.com/a/52039249/6241235 – QHarr Nov 19 '18 at 17:10