Unable to locate element using className in Selenium and Java

Question

I wanted to locate a element of a web page using class name in Selenium. This is the web element that I tried:

<button class="signup-button b green">Get Started!</button>

When I try this way, I was unable to locate the button;

driver.findElement(By.className("signup-button")).click();

But, using css selector like below, it was working;

driver.findElement(By.cssSelector("button.signup-button")).click();

What is the reason for that sometimes working and other times not working?

Answer 1

As you are able to locate the following element:

<button class="signup-button b green">Get Started!</button>

using:

driver.findElement(By.cssSelector("button.signup-button")).click();

but was unable to locate the same element using:

driver.findElement(By.className("signup-button")).click();

That's because there were other elements which renders within the HTML DOM with className as signup-button even before the desired element, which possibly may be invisible by design.

Ideally, you should also be able to use a xpath based Locator Strategy:

driver.findElement(By.xpath("//button[@class='signup-button' and text()='Get Started!']")).click();

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Best Practices

But as per best practices, you need to use WebDriverWait for the elementToBeClickable() and you can use either of the following Locator Strategies:

• cssSelector:

  new WebDriverWait(driver, 20).until(ExpectedConditions.elementToBeClickable(By.cssSelector("button.signup-button"))).click();
  

• xpath:

  new WebDriverWait(driver, 20).until(ExpectedConditions.elementToBeClickable(By.xpath("//button[@class='signup-button' and text()='Get Started!']"))).click();
  

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References

You can find a couple of relevant discussions in:

• NoSuchElementException, Selenium unable to locate element

Answer 2

You need to use relative xpath , if you could not have locators like id and class name Can you try with //button[contains(text(),"Get Started!")] this xpath