Python Selenium: How to wait until href attribute contains a specific string?

Question

For example, I'm opening page https://example.com/page-1/ in Selenium, looking for a specific link that contains domain.com. Right now I'm using sleep(20) to ensure the page has fully loaded. But I wonder if I can use WebDriverWait not only for tag presence but also for its contains presence as well. Could not find any solution yet...

Answer 1

You can try something like this, I'm assuming that you are using Firefox but the logic is the same:

firefox = webdriver.Firefox()
firefox.get('https://example.com/page-1/')
#wait for a maximum of 60 seconds in this example
wait = WebDriverWait(firefox, 60)
domain = "domain.com"
wait.until(lambda x: x.find_element_by_css_selector(f"a[href*='{domain}']"))

Answer 2

To wait for the WebElement for the href attribute to contain a specific string, you can induce WebDriverWait for the visibility_of_element_located() and you can use either of the following Locator Strategies:

• Full match of domain.com:

  • Using CSS_SELECTOR:

    element = WebDriverWait(browser, 20).until(EC.visibility_of_element_located((By.CSS_SELECTOR, "a[href='domain.com']")))
    

  • Using XPATH:

    element = WebDriverWait(browser, 20).until(EC.visibility_of_element_located((By.XPATH, "//a[@href='domain.com']")))
    

• Partial match of domain.com:

  • Using CSS_SELECTOR:

    element = WebDriverWait(browser, 20).until(EC.visibility_of_element_located((By.CSS_SELECTOR, "a[href*='domain.com']")))
    

  • Using XPATH:

    element = WebDriverWait(browser, 20).until(EC.visibility_of_element_located((By.XPATH, "//a[contains(@href, 'domain.com')]")))
    

• 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