Able to clear the textbox but not able to send new text

Question

I am trying to extract table from a website using python selenium. In the webpage, i need to select the desired date. For day and month there are two dropdown box. For these two i am using css selector and able to select the date and month. But the problem is with year. It is a text box with a default value '2020' the current year. So first I simply tried sending "2019" as input. But that wouldn't work and return the default page data, i.e, the current date data.

Then I tried clearing the textbox and then send the input as "2019". This method returns a table with NANs. How can I send 2019 as input for year?

from selenium import webdriver
from selenium.webdriver.chrome.options import Options
from selenium.webdriver.common.keys import Keys
from datetime import datetime, timedelta
from math import ceil
import pandas as pd
import numpy as np
from time import time, sleep
import re

CHROMEDRIVER_PATH = '/path /to/chromedriver'

options = Options()
options.add_argument('--headless')
options.add_argument('--disable-gpu')
driver = webdriver.Chrome(CHROMEDRIVER_PATH, chrome_options=options)

driver.get("URL")
# date = datetime.now() - timedelta(days=1)
date = datetime(2019,11,4)
year = date.strftime("%Y")
month = date.strftime("%m")
day = date.strftime("%d")
date = date.strftime("%Y-%m-%d")

driver.find_element_by_css_selector("#ContentPlaceHolder2_txtyear").clear() #Clear the default value from the box
sleep(1)
driver.find_element_by_css_selector("#ContentPlaceHolder2_txtyear").send_keys(year) #Send the year as a string
sleep(1)
driver.find_element_by_css_selector("#ContentPlaceHolder2_txtyear").send_keys(Keys.ENTER) #Hit enter after sending the key
sleep(1)

driver.find_element_by_css_selector("#ContentPlaceHolder2_ddmonth").send_keys(month) #Send input for month
driver.find_element_by_css_selector("#ContentPlaceHolder2_ddday").send_keys(day) # send input for day

html = driver.page_source

pd.read_html(html)[0]

Edit: The year textbox element from source code is as follows:

<input name="ctl00$ContentPlaceHolder2$txtyear"
       type="text"
       value="2020"
       onchange="javascript:setTimeout('__doPostBack(\'ctl00$ContentPlaceHolder2$txtyear\',\'\')', 0)"
       onkeypress="if (WebForm_TextBoxKeyHandler(event) == false) return false;"
       id="ContentPlaceHolder2_txtyear"
       style="height:16px;width:46px;margin-left: 0px">

is clear working properly..?? Does it clear the existing date — Hietsh Kumar, Feb 03 '20 at 10:58
@HietshKumar Yes. I believe it is working. Since, after using clear() i am getting a table of NANs only. The selector is correct. I used Rselenium to check if the selectors were correct or not. And I was also able to give the input "2019". Since I am new to python I'm not sure where the problem is? — user11593389, Feb 03 '20 at 11:16
Its not giving any errors. Rather a table of NANs and a row with "Data not available for this date" — user11593389, Feb 03 '20 at 11:20
try click before clear, ...and send_keys(str(year))....try to send tab inplace of enter... check if it works — Hietsh Kumar, Feb 03 '20 at 11:29

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered Feb 03 '20 at 11:28

The relevant HTML of the desired element would have helped us to analyze the issue in a better way.

However, to locate and invoke click() / clear() / send_keys() on the element you need to induce WebDriverWait for the element_to_be_clickable() and you can use either of the following Locator Strategies:

Using CSS_SELECTOR:

element = WebDriverWait(driver, 20).until(EC.element_to_be_clickable((By.CSS_SELECTOR, "#ContentPlaceHolder2_txtyear")))
element.click()
element.clear()
element.send_keys("user11593389")

Using XPATH:

element = WebDriverWait(driver, 20).until(EC.element_to_be_clickable((By.XPATH, "//*[@id='ContentPlaceHolder2_txtyear']")))
element.click()
element.clear()
element.send_keys("user11593389")

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

Tried doing this earlier, but it threw an error at ```element.send_keys("2019")``` as follows ```StaleElementReferenceException: Message: stale element reference: element is not attached to the page document``` — user11593389, Feb 03 '20 at 11:35
@user11593389: Just clearing and sending the keys worked for me. Give it a try, element.clear() and then element.send_keys("user11593389"). Adding the click gave me an error too. — The AG, May 27 '21 at 15:10

Able to clear the textbox but not able to send new text

1 Answers1