Selenium XPATH Returns Empty Set?

Question

I visited: http://132.247.137.206/web/guest/en/websys/webArch/mainFrame.cgi

and wrote the following in python (after waiting for page to load)

try:
    tmp = driver.find_elements(By.XPATH, '//*[text()="Login"]')
    print(tmp)
except Exception as e:
    print('NONE FOUND!')

But all I see being printed is:

[]

Why is that?

I'm expecting the above code to return ay item in the page link or button that has the word Login.

Answer 1

[] denotes empty list as the locator strategy you have used doesn't identifies the element within the DOM Tree.

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Deep Dive

The element with text as Login is within an <frame>:

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Solution

To identify the element you have to:

• Induce WebDriverWait for the desired frame to be available and switch to it.

• Induce WebDriverWait for the desired element to be clickable.

• You can use either of the following Locator Strategies:

  • Using XPATH:

    driver.get("http://132.247.137.206/web/guest/en/websys/webArch/mainFrame.cgi")
    WebDriverWait(driver, 20).until(EC.frame_to_be_available_and_switch_to_it((By.XPATH,"//frame[@title='Header Area']")))
    print(WebDriverWait(driver, 20).until(EC.element_to_be_clickable((By.XPATH, "//span[text()='Login']"))))
    

• 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
  

• Console Output:

  <selenium.webdriver.remote.webelement.WebElement (session="224f5eafafd1c7422d408810378cd6ec", element="d4e316c3-3187-42e9-b1d2-054cbab92f0b")>