Unable to Locate Element for Selenium Webdriver Path in Python

Question

I've been trying to reference the two inputs in the following HTML code using Selenium's get_element_by_...() with the purpose of automatically entering a username and password into the fields. I'm running into trouble with accessing the proper HTML elements.

<body>
  <div id="app">
    <div>
      <section id="root" class="page-login">
        <section class="main">
          <section class="auth-page register-fill">
            <div class="page-center">
              <a class="switch-lang" href="/cn/login">cn</a>
              <a class="btn-back" href="en/login">
                <span class="isvg loaded">
                  <svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" width="100" height="100" viewBox="0 0 24 24">
                    <path class="a" d="M0,0H24V24H0Z"></path>
                    <path class="b" d="M20,11H7.83l5.59-5.59L12,4,4,12l8,8,1.41-1.41L7.83,13H20Z"></path>
                  </svg>
                </span>
              </a>
              <div class="auth-page-wrapper">
                <h1 class="auth-page-title">Welcome Back</h1>
                <h2 class="auth-page-subtitle">Login to get started</h2>
                <div class="auth-page-fields">
                  <div class="custom-input">
                    <input type="text" placeholder="Email">
                    <label>Email</label>
                  </div>
                  <div class="custom-input custom-input-password">
                    <a class="forgot-link" href="en/forgot-password">Forgot Password?</a>
                    <input type="password" placeholder="Minimum 6 characters">
                    <label>Password</label>
                  </div>
                </div>

Note: The HTML may have some mistakes, I just quickly formatted it, but the mistakes should not affect the question.

Tried:

I've tried using all the different functions of the 'form find_element_by_...' and referencing a variety of things, but all tend to return "no such element: unable to locate element ..." I've done absolute xpaths, relative xpaths, css selectors, ids, and combinations of these.

Some examples:

username = browser.find_element_by_xpath("//input[1]")
username = browser.find_element_by_xpath("//html/body/div/div/section/.../input")

The error begins at this point in the path:

username = browser.find_element_by_xpath("//html/body/div/div/section")

I'm likely making a stupid mistake, so sorry if this question isn't great, but other StackOverflow answers all have ids and such that are referable on the input field. (eg. <input id=username ...>)

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered Jul 24 '20 at 16:40

To identify the Email field you have to induce WebDriverWait for the element_to_be_clickable() and you can use either of the following Locator Strategies:

Using CSS_SELECTOR:

username = WebDriverWait(driver, 20).until(EC.element_to_be_clickable((By.CSS_SELECTOR, "input[placeholder='Email']")))

Using XPATH:

username = WebDriverWait(driver, 20).until(EC.element_to_be_clickable((By.XPATH, "//input[@placeholder='Email']")))

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

Thank you! This worked. I thought it was somehow a syntax error, but I guess it was just a waiting issue. So the reason you need this is to account for the webpage loading time I assume? — Artemis, Jul 24 '20 at 16:47

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Jul 24 '20 at 16:42

0

There are more than one way to do this. But, this should work browser.find_element_by_css_selector('[placeholder="Email"]')

answered Jul 24 '20 at 16:42

Aayush Upadhyay

93
4

This is one of the things I'd already tried and it did not work. Thanks though. – Artemis Jul 24 '20 at 16:45
I ran this code with the minimal html you have posted and it works. Maybe you need to wait for the web element to be visible like @DebanjanB has suggested. Or, you might be dealing with iframes in which case you have to switch to the specific frame in which your element exists. – Aayush Upadhyay Jul 24 '20 at 16:49

Unable to Locate Element for Selenium Webdriver Path in Python

2 Answers2