How to click the icon in selenium python

Question

I am trying to do logout on a web page by selenium and python, and currently no luck. In order to do a logout, I need to click the link at the upper right corner of the web page, and it will have a small drop-down window open, and then I can click the "logout" icon inside this drop-down window. Here is the picture of this drop down window.

And the inspect code for this logout icon in the dropdown window.

Now in my python code, I was able to have the drop-down window open, but if I was to click the logout icon, I keep getting exception of "selenium.common.exceptions.ElementNotVisibleException".

Here is my code:

try:
    # to click the link so that the drop-down window opens 
    action = ActionChains(self.driver)
    dropdownwindow= self.driver.find_element_by_xpath("//span[@class='ssobanner_logged']/img")
    action.move_to_element(dropdownwindow).perform()
    dropdownwindow.click()

    # try to click the logout icon in the drop-down so that user may logout 
    logoutLink = self.driver.find_element_by_xpath(
        "//*[@id='ctl00_HeaderAfterLogin1_DL_Portals1']/tbody/tr/td[4]/a/img")
    action.move_to_element(logoutLink).perform()
    logoutLink.click()
    return True
except Exception as e:
    self.logger.info(e)
    raise
return False

And I have got such exceptions during the run time.

selenium.common.exceptions.NoSuchElementException: 
Message: no such element: Unable to locate element: 
 {"method":"xpath","selector":"//*[@id='ctl00_HeaderAfterLogin1_DL_Portals1']/tbody/tr/td[4]/a/img"}

Does anyone know a better way to handle that, other than the xpath I was using ?

use expectedconditions to wait until the visibility of the element located by "Log Out" element. — Sureshmani Kalirajan, Mar 05 '20 at 19:15
@DebanjanB Please read [What are tags, and how should I use them?](https://stackoverflow.com/help/tagging), pay close attention to the first paragraph and the *Should I use tags in titles?* section. — Guy, Mar 10 '20 at 05:03

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Mar 05 '20 at 19:28

1

The problem is most likely that the dropdown menu has not fully been expanded/rendered after it is clicked. While a time.sleep(1) command could be a potential fix, a more appropriate fix is a dynamic wait using WebDriverWait:

from selenium.common.exceptions import TimeoutException
from selenium.webdriver.common.by import By
from selenium.webdriver.support import expected_conditions
from selenium.webdriver.support.ui import WebDriverWait

by = By.XPATH  # This could also be By.CSS_SELECTOR, By.Name, etc.
hook = "//*[@id='ctl00_HeaderAfterLogin1_DL_Portals1']/tbody/tr/td[4]/a/img"
max_time_to_wait = 10  # Maximum time to wait for the element to be present
WebDriverWait(driver, max_time_to_wait).until(expected_conditions.element_to_be_clickable((by, hook)))

expected_conditions can also wait using visibility_of_element_located or presence_of_element_located

answered Mar 05 '20 at 19:28

Brydenr

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1
19
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I have just tried, If I have Explicit Wait added, I got this type of exception: " selenium.common.exceptions.StaleElementReferenceException: Message: stale element reference: element is not attached to the page document " . – user3595231 Mar 05 '20 at 20:20
That exception is occurring because the page is refreshing or rebuilding after you get a handle on the element. The explicit wait (`time.sleep`) is also more fragile and likely to either break, or wait longer than necessary. – Brydenr Mar 05 '20 at 21:01
Then how may I make sure it works ? To wait extra longer time ? When I have it running in regular mode, I do see the drop down window, but it is exits with such exception in the end. – user3595231 Mar 05 '20 at 21:18

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Mar 05 '20 at 21:18

Once the drop-down window opens up to click on the icon with text as Logout you need to induce WebDriverWait for the element_to_be_clickable() and you can use either of the following Locator Strategies:

Using CSS_SELECTOR:

WebDriverWait(driver, 20).until(EC.element_to_be_clickable((By.CSS_SELECTOR, "span.portals-separator +table td>a[title='Log out'][data-mkey='Logout']>img"))).click()

Using XPATH:

WebDriverWait(driver, 20).until(EC.element_to_be_clickable((By.XPATH, "//span[text()='Support and Settings']//following-sibling::table[1]//td/a[@title='Log out' and @data-mkey='Logout']/img"))).click()

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

How to click the icon in selenium python

2 Answers2