How to find element with dynamic id through Selenium Webdriver

Question

I am new to using webdriver in Python with Selenium and have run into a barrier on something I am working on to automate some data extraction from a webportal. I am trying to enter a date into a textbox, but I my script returns a NoSuchElementException no matter which way I try to search for the element.

Using Chrome, I can use the below ID to easily identify the element in the inspect window, but finding it with Python has been impossible.

HTML element I am trying to isolate:

input id="6A8A7718100001256A44465A5ED3AEAC-toDate" type="text" value="01/15/2019" size="10" maxlength="10" onchange="validateDateField('to', '6A8A7718100001256A44465A5ED3AEAC-fromDate', '6A8A7718100001256A44465A5ED3AEAC-toDate', '6A8A7718100001256A44465A5ED3AEAC-absRangeErr')"

Here is what I have tried:

from_date = driver.find_elements_by_id("6A8A7718100001256A44465A5ED3AEAC-fromDate")
from_date = driver.find_element_by_xpath("//input[@id='6A8A7718100001256A44465A5ED3AEAC-fromDate']")
from_date = from_date = driver.find_element_by_css_selector("input[id='6A8A7718100001256A44465A5ED3AEAC-fromDate']")

Any help is appreciated, thanks!

sytax look fine but I can see that maybe you are using a wrong id. If the id of your input is : "6A8A7718100001256A44465A5ED3AEAC-toDate" why are you trying to find this one: "6A8A7718100001256A44465A5ED3AEAC-fromDate"? — Juan Manuel Hernandez, Jan 15 '19 at 23:25
Good catch, I have two text boxes (one "fromDate, one "toDate") and I was testing to see if either of them could work. I've made an edit to avoid any further confusion. — Peyton Fry, Jan 16 '19 at 00:10

score 3 · Answer 1 · answered Jan 16 '19 at 00:23

3

The alphanumeric characters before the '-toDate' seem to be auto generated. This means that they may change between builds of the site or may be dynamically created when the js runs.

Therefore I would use the contains keyword in xpath as it should be more robust against these changes.

to_date = driver.find_element_by_xpath("//input[contains(@id, '-toDate')]")
from_date = driver.find_element_by_xpath("//input[contains(@id, '-fromDate')]")

answered Jan 16 '19 at 00:23

cullzie

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Thanks cullzie! The main issue was that the element was in an iframe and I was unaware I had to switch over to that before looking for the nested element. Your solution should help a lot moving forward now that I am in the correct window. – Peyton Fry Jan 16 '19 at 17:07

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Jan 16 '19 at 02:35

To send a date i.e. a character sequence into the textbox as the desired element is a dynamic element you have to induce WebDriverWait for the element to be clickable and you can use either of the following solutions:

Using CSS_SELECTOR:

WebDriverWait(browser, 20).until(EC.element_to_be_clickable((By.CSS_SELECTOR, "input[id$='-toDate'][onchange*='-toDate']"))).send_keys("01/16/2019")

Using XPATH:

WebDriverWait(browser, 20).until(EC.element_to_be_clickable((By.XPATH, "//input[contains(@id, '-toDate') and contains(@onchange, '-toDate')]"))).send_keys("01/16/2019")

Note : You have to add the following imports :

from selenium.webdriver.support.ui import WebDriverWait
from selenium.webdriver.common.by import By
from selenium.webdriver.support import expected_conditions as EC

You can find a detailed discussion in Selenium “selenium.common.exceptions.NoSuchElementException” when using Chrome

Thanks DebanjanB, the link to the exceptions saved me here. The element I needed was in an iframe and I had to switch over to it before searching. — Peyton Fry, Jan 16 '19 at 17:06

How to find element with dynamic id through Selenium Webdriver

2 Answers2