Rselenium: Skip error and keep running. How can by pass it?

Question

Im trying to scrape some websites, but sometimes theres some that do not contain a button that the Code look for with findElement. So when the Code doesn't find what im looking for, it gives me the following error:

Selenium message:no such element: Unable to locate element: {"method":"link text","selector":"see more"}
  (Session info: chrome=104.0.5112.79)
For documentation on this error, please visit: https://www.seleniumhq.org/exceptions/no_such_element.html
Build info: version: '4.0.0-alpha-2', revision: 'f148142cf8', time: '2019-07-01T21:30:10'
System info: host: '192.168.1.12', ip: 'fe80:0:0:0:4c4:faba:fe32:b5f4%en0', os.name: 'Mac OS X', os.arch: 'x86_64', os.version: '12.5', java.version: '1.8.0_341'
Driver info: driver.version: unknown

I tried using findElements but after that its supposed to click the Element, so not possible with that function.

Any workaround?

How you Call `tryCatch` with this `seedesc= RemDr$findElement(using = "link text", value = "see more")$clickElement()` ? @akrun — lasagna, Aug 11 '22 at 18:02
Not tested, perhaps you want `tryCatch({RemDr$findElement(using = "link text", value = "see more")$clickElement()}, error = function(e) NA_character_)` — akrun, Aug 11 '22 at 18:05
keep happening same error @akrun. Code stops after error with selenium — lasagna, Aug 11 '22 at 19:08
Here is a similar [case](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/41449082/handle-rselenium-error-messages) which may work for you — akrun, Aug 11 '22 at 19:10

Neal Barsch · Answer 1 · 2022-08-16T18:23:33.800

Use findElements() which can be accessed in list (list uses double brackets in R i.e. [[1]]) to click found elements:

seedesc <- RemDr$findElements(using = "link text", value = "see more")
seedesc[[1]]$clickElement()

#to click the second found element if there is one
seedesc[[2]]$clickElement() #etc...

When the element is not on the page, seedesc created by findElements() will be a list length 0:

element_exists <- isTRUE(length(seedesc)>0)

Rselenium: Skip error and keep running. How can by pass it?

1 Answers1