Selenium (Python) - NoSuchElementException: Message: no such element: Unable to locate element

Question

I'm trying to make a simple script that goes to the homepage of The Whiskey Exchange, clicks on the following menu item, navigates to the new page and finally grabs a screenshot.

menu item

from selenium import webdriver
from selenium.webdriver.chrome.service import Service
from webdriver_manager.chrome import ChromeDriverManager
from selenium.webdriver.chrome.options import Options
from selenium.webdriver.common.by import By

chrome_options = Options()

driver = webdriver.Chrome(options=chrome_options)
driver.get("https://www.thewhiskyexchange.com/")
driver.implicitly_wait(3)

search_bar = driver.find_element(
    By.XPATH, "/html/body/div[3]/nav/div/div[3]/div/div/div[2]/a[2]")
search_bar.click()
driver.implicitly_wait(3)

driver.save_screenshot('./image.png')
driver.quit()

I've tried multiple approaches to get this to work, mainly by changing the type of finder, but with no luck. I've tried copying both XPATH and Full XPATH (directly from chrome), but that hasn't worked either. Maybe it's something to do with how the site is built, but no idea.

I'm getting the following error message:

NoSuchElementException: Message: no such element: Unable to locate element: {"method":"xpath","selector":"/html/body/div[3]/nav/div/div[3]/div/div/div[2]/a[2]"}

First time using selenium, so the struggle is a bit real. Please help.

I don't see an element with that xpath is the screenshot you want of the searchbox of the main page cause another element pops up. — Arundeep Chohan, Feb 07 '22 at 21:53
Which element are you referring by _/html/body/div[3]/nav/div/div[3]/div/div/div[2]/a[2]_ — undetected Selenium, Feb 07 '22 at 22:06
It's the menu item that I have circled in the picture. I copied the full xpath from Chrome Developer Tools. — lazarid2, Feb 07 '22 at 23:11

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered Feb 07 '22 at 21:55

0

CSS_SELECTOR

a.header-button.header-button--search.js-header-button--search

XPATH

//a[@title='Search']

You could simply use this css selector since I don't see an xpath like that.

answered Feb 07 '22 at 21:55

Arundeep Chohan

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I have tried the CSS Selector method, I received a new error message I'm afraid. ElementNotInteractableException: Message: element not interactable – lazarid2 Feb 07 '22 at 23:13
Try using webdriver wait element to be clickable. – Arundeep Chohan Feb 08 '22 at 06:47

score 0 · Accepted Answer · answered Feb 08 '22 at 10:31

To expand the Scotch Whisky menu you don't need to click on the item, instead you can simply Mouse Hover and grab a screenshot of the webpage using either of the following Locator Strategies:

Using CSS_SELECTOR:

driver.get('https://www.thewhiskyexchange.com/')
ActionChains(driver).move_to_element(WebDriverWait(driver, 20).until(EC.visibility_of_element_located((By.CSS_SELECTOR, "a[title='Scotch Whisky']")))).perform()
driver.save_screenshot('./Scotch_Whisky.png')
driver.quit()

Using XPATH:

driver.get('https://www.thewhiskyexchange.com/')
ActionChains(driver).move_to_element(WebDriverWait(driver, 20).until(EC.visibility_of_element_located((By.XPATH, "//a[@title='Scotch Whisky']")))).perform()
driver.save_screenshot('./Scotch_Whisky.png')
driver.quit()

Note : You have to add the following imports :

from selenium.webdriver.common.action_chains import ActionChains
from selenium.webdriver.support.ui import WebDriverWait
from selenium.webdriver.common.by import By
from selenium.webdriver.support import expected_conditions as EC

Screenshot:

Thank you! This snippet of code got me very close, so I just added an extra step to execute a click command on the "Single Malt Whisky" sub menu item and I got the result I was after! — lazarid2, Feb 08 '22 at 15:00

Selenium (Python) - NoSuchElementException: Message: no such element: Unable to locate element

2 Answers2