Selenium unable to locate button

Question

I am trying to click a button on a website in Python using Selenium. The html looks like this:

<a class="btn btn-default btn-lg primary-light-blue-btn" onclick="createReport()">Create report</a>

I have tried using:

l = driver.find_element(By.XPATH, "//button[@class='btn btn-default btn-lg primary-light-blue-btn']")

But I get the error:

NoSuchElementException: no such element: Unable to locate element: {"method":"xpath","selector":"//button[@class='btn btn-default btn-lg primary-light-blue-btn']"}

I have also tried other things, but it just won't find the button. E.g.:

l = driver.find_element(By.XPATH, "//button[text()='Create report']")

I have also tried introducing a wait, but that does not help, e.g.:

l = WebDriverWait(driver, 10).until(EC.element_to_be_clickable((By.XPATH, "//button[text()='Create report']")))

Oh I see. The website shows it as a clickable button for users, but when I inspect the html code, then all I see is what I wrote there. Perhaps I didn’t find the right html code? — Bob, Jan 29 '23 at 22:24

score 2 · Answer 1 · answered Jan 29 '23 at 22:22

2

change the tag //button to //a:

l = driver.find_element(By.XPATH, "//a[@class='btn btn-default btn-lg primary-light-blue-btn']")

answered Jan 29 '23 at 22:22

Khalil

410
5
13

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Jan 29 '23 at 22:34

As per the given HTML:

<a class="btn btn-default btn-lg primary-light-blue-btn" onclick="createReport()">Create report</a>

The element is a <a> tag.

Solution

To click on the element with text as Create report you can use either of the following locator strategies:

Using link_text:

driver.find_element(By.LINK_TEXT, "Create report").click()

Using css_selector:

driver.find_element(By.CSS_SELECTOR, "a.btn.btn-default.btn-lg.primary-light-blue-btn[onclick^='createReport']").click()

Using xpath:

driver.find_element(By.XPATH, "//a[@class='btn btn-default btn-lg primary-light-blue-btn' and starts-with(@onclick, 'createReport')]").click()

Ideally to click on 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 LINK_TEXT:

WebDriverWait(driver, 20).until(EC.element_to_be_clickable((By.LINK_TEXT, "Create report"))).click()

Using CSS_SELECTOR:

WebDriverWait(driver, 20).until(EC.element_to_be_clickable((By.CSS_SELECTOR, "a.btn.btn-default.btn-lg.primary-light-blue-btn[onclick^='createReport']"))).click()

Using XPATH:

WebDriverWait(driver, 20).until(EC.element_to_be_clickable((By.XPATH, "//a[@class='btn btn-default btn-lg primary-light-blue-btn' and starts-with(@onclick, 'createReport')]"))).click()

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

Selenium unable to locate button

2 Answers2

Solution