Checking if element exists with Python Selenium

Question

I have a problem - I am using the selenium  firefox  web driver to open a webpage  click a few links etc  then capture a screenshot   My script runs fine from the CLI  but when run via a cronjob it is not getting past the first find element   test  I need to add some debug  or something to help me figure out why it is failing   Basically  I have to click a  log in  anchor before going to the login page  The construct of the element is    lt a class  lnk  rel  nofollow  href   login jsp destination  secure Dash jspa  gt log in lt  a gt    I am using the find element By LINK TEXT method   login   driver find element By LINK TEXT   log in   click     I am a bit of a Python Noob  so I am battling with the language a bit     A  How do I check that the link is actually being picked up by python  Should I use try catch block   B  Is there a better more reliable way to locate the DOM element than by LINK TEXT  E g  In JQuery  you can use a more specific selector    a lnk contains log in    do something       I have solved the main problem and it was just finger trouble - I was calling the script with incorrect parameters - Simple mistake   I d still like some pointers on how to check whether an element exists  Also  an example explanation of implicit   explicit Waits instead of using a crappy time sleep   call    Cheers  ns

User · Answer

None of the solutions provided seemed at all easiest to me, so I'd like to add my own way.

Basically, you get the list of the elements instead of just the element and then count the results; if it's zero, then it doesn't exist. Example:

if driver.find_elements_by_css_selector('#element'):
    print "Element exists"

Notice the "s" in find_elements_by_css_selector to make sure it can be countable.

EDIT: I was checking the len( of the list, but I recently learned that an empty list is falsey, so you don't need to get the length of the list at all, leaving for even simpler code.

Also, another answer says that using xpath is more reliable, which is just not true. See What is the difference between css-selector & Xpath? which is better(according to performance & for cross browser testing)?

User · Answer

driver find element by id  some id   size   is class method   What we need is     driver find element by id  some id   size which is dictionary so    if driver find element by id  some id   size  width      0      print  button exist

User · Answer

a   from selenium common exceptions import NoSuchElementException         def check exists by xpath xpath       try          webdriver find element by xpath xpath      except NoSuchElementException          return False     return True   b  use xpath - the most reliable  Moreover you can take the xpath as a standard throughout all your scripts and create functions as above mentions for universal use   UPDATE  I wrote the initial answer over 4 years ago and at the time I thought xpath would be the best option  Now I recommend to use css selectors  I still recommend not to mix use  by id    by name  and etc and use one single approach instead

User · Answer

A  Yes   The easiest way to check if an element exists is to simply call find element inside a try catch   B   Yes  I always try to identify elements without using their text for 2 reasons      the text is more likely to change and  if it is important to you  you won t be able to run your tests against localized builds    solution either    You can use xpath to find a parent or ancestor element that has an ID or some other unique identifier and then find it s child descendant that matches or  you could request an ID or name or some other unique identifier for the link itself    For the follow up questions  using try catch is how you can tell if an element exists or not and good examples of waits can be found here  http   seleniumhq org docs 04 webdriver advanced html

User · Answer

you could use is displayed   like below res   driver find element by id  quot some id quot   is displayed   assert res   element not displayed

User · Answer

You can find elements by available methods and check response array length if the length of an array equal the 0 element not exist  element exist   False if len driver find elements by css selector  div eiCW-     gt  0 else True

User · Answer

You could also do it more concisely using driver find element by id  quot some id quot   size    0

User · Answer

Solution without try amp catch and without new imports   if len driver find elements by id  blah     gt  0   pay attention  find element s      driver find element by id  blah   click  pay attention  find element

User · Answer

The same as Brian  but add to this answer from tstempko   https   sqa stackexchange com questions 3481 quicker-way-to-assert-that-an-element-does-not-exist  So I tried and it works quickly   driver implicitly wait 0   if driver find element by id  show reflist             driver find element by id  show reflist   find element by tag name  img   click     after this I restore my default value  driver implicitly wait 30

[python] Checking if element exists with Python Selenium

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