How to find element using Selenium and Python

Question

Just starting to learn selenium using python and running into trouble with the basics of finding elements. This is a search/text box that I am trying to click into and send text to it.

Here is the code of the element I got from Edge.

<div class="box" id="ClinicSrch" style="display:block">
  <span align="lb">Last:</span> 
<input type="search" name="NameLast" size="15" class="white1" value="" maxlength="25">
  &nbsp;First: <input type="search" name="NameFirst" size="15" class="white1" value="" maxlength="25"><br>

Here is my code:

driver.find_element(By.XPATH, '//*[@id="ClinicSrch"]/input[1]').click()

The xpath that I get when copying the element from edge inspect tool is:

//*[@id="ClinicSrch"]/input[1]

Full xpath is:

/html/body/form/div[1]/div[1]/input[1]

I've been trying with other fields and buttons where I have similar xpaths but nothing is working. I always get no such element.

Answer 1

To locate the Last Name search field you can use either of the following locator strategies:

• Using css_selector:

  WebDriverWait(driver, 20).until(EC.frame_to_be_available_and_switch_to_it((By.CSS_SELECTOR,"iframe#PtSrchFrame[name='PtSrchFrame']")))
  element = driver.find_element(By.CSS_SELECTOR, "input[name='NameLast']")
  

• Using xpath:

  WebDriverWait(driver, 20).until(EC.frame_to_be_available_and_switch_to_it((By.XPATH,"//iframe[@id='PtSrchFrame' and @name='PtSrchFrame']")))  
  element = driver.find_element(By.XPATH, "//input[@name='NameLast']")
  

---

Ideally, to locate the clickable element you need to induce WebDriverWait for the element_to_be_clickable() and you can use either of the following locator strategies:

• Using CSS_SELECTOR:

  WebDriverWait(driver, 20).until(EC.frame_to_be_available_and_switch_to_it((By.CSS_SELECTOR,"iframe#PtSrchFrame[name='PtSrchFrame']")))
  element = WebDriverWait(driver, 20).until(EC.element_to_be_clickable((By.CSS_SELECTOR, "input[name='NameLast']")))
  

• Using XPATH:

  WebDriverWait(driver, 20).until(EC.frame_to_be_available_and_switch_to_it((By.XPATH,"//iframe[@id='PtSrchFrame' and @name='PtSrchFrame']")))      
  element = WebDriverWait(driver, 20).until(EC.element_to_be_clickable((By.XPATH, "//input[@name='NameLast']")))
  

• 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