How to find_element_by_link_text while having: NoSuchElement Exception?
This question has been asked over and over again - and in-spite of trying all the hacks I still can't seem to figure out what's wrong.
I tried increasing the implicitly_wait to 30 (and even increased it upto 100) - yet it did not work.
Use case -: I am trying to create a list that wil populate all the items in the page here, as a base case - and I intend to bind this to a mini-module that I already have with scrapy which has all (pages with similar web elements) crawled links - so essentially will be building the whole pipeline, post I am done with this.
###My source code - generated via Selenium IDE, exported to a Python webdriver and manipulated a little later ###
from selenium import webdriver
from selenium.webdriver.common.by import By
from selenium.webdriver.support.ui import Select
from selenium.common.exceptions import NoSuchElementException
from selenium.webdriver.support.wait import WebDriverWait
import unittest, time, re
class Einstein(unittest.TestCase):
def setUp(self):
self.driver = webdriver.Firefox()
self.driver.implicitly_wait(30)
self.base_url = "http://shopap.lenovo.com/in/en/laptops/"
self.verificationErrors = []
self.accept_next_alert = True
def test_einstein(self):
driver = self.driver
driver.get(self.base_url)
print driver.title
driver.find_element_by_link_text("T430").click()
print driver.title
# driver.find_element_by_xpath("id('facetedBrowseWrapper')/div/div/div[1]/div[2]/ul[1]/li[1]/a").click()
driver.find_element_by_xpath("//div[@id='subseries']/div[2]/div/p[3]/a").click()
print driver.title
# driver.find_element_by_xpath("//div[@id='subseries']/div[2]/div/p[3]/a").click()
try: self.assertEqual("Thinkpad Edge E530 (Black)", driver.find_element_by_link_text("Thinkpad Edge E530 (Black)").text)
except AssertionError as e: self.verificationErrors.append(str(e))
# Everything ok till here
#**THE CODE FAILS HERE**#
laptop1 = driver.find_element_by_link_text("Thinkpad Edge E530 (Black)").text
print laptop1
price1 = driver.find_element_by_css_selector("span.price").text
print price1
detail1 = self.is_element_present(By.CSS_SELECTOR, "div.desc.std")
print detail1
def is_element_present(self, how, what):
try: self.driver.find_element(by=how, value=what)
except NoSuchElementException, e: return False
return True
def is_alert_present(self):
try: self.driver.switch_to_alert()
except NoAlertPresentException, e: return False
return True
def close_alert_and_get_its_text(self):
try:
alert = self.driver.switch_to_alert()
alert_text = alert.text
if self.accept_next_alert:
alert.accept()
else:
alert.dismiss()
return alert_text
finally: self.accept_next_alert = True
def tearDown(self):
self.driver.quit()
self.assertEqual([], self.verificationErrors)
if __name__ == "__main__":
unittest.main()
Errors & output :
ekta@ekta-VirtualBox:~$ python einstein.py
Laptops & Ultrabooks | Lenovo (IN)
ThinkPad T430 Laptop PC for Business Computing | Lenovo (IN)
Buy Lenovo Thinkpad Laptops | Lenovo Thinkpad Laptops Price India
E
======================================================================
ERROR: test_einstein (__main__.Einstein)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "einstein.py", line 27, in test_einstein
try: self.assertEqual("Thinkpad Edge E530 (Black)", driver.find_element_by_link_text("Thinkpad Edge E530 (Black)").text)
File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/selenium/webdriver/remote/webdriver.py", line 246, in find_element_by_link_text
return self.find_element(by=By.LINK_TEXT, value=link_text)
File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/selenium/webdriver/remote/webdriver.py", line 680, in find_element
{'using': by, 'value': value})['value']
File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/selenium/webdriver/remote/webdriver.py", line 165, in execute
self.error_handler.check_response(response)
File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/selenium/webdriver/remote/errorhandler.py", line 158, in check_response
raise exception_class(message, screen, stacktrace)
NoSuchElementException: Message: u'Unable to locate element: {"method":"link text","selector":"Thinkpad Edge E530 (Black)"}' ; Stacktrace:
at FirefoxDriver.prototype.findElementInternal_ (file:///tmp/tmphli5Jg/extensions/[email protected]/components/driver_component.js:8444)
at fxdriver.Timer.prototype.setTimeout/<.notify (file:///tmp/tmphli5Jg/extensions/[email protected]/components/driver_component.js:386)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Ran 1 test in 79.348s
FAILED (errors=1)
Questions & comments:
If you are answering this question - please mention why this specific "find_element_by_link_text" does not work.
(Very Basic) In the GUI of my selenium IDE -> Show all available commands - why dont I see the css (find_element_by_css_selector) for all the web elements - is there a way to force feed an element to be read as a CSS selector ?
In case you suggest using some other locator - please mention if that will be consistent way to fetch elements, given (1)
Does assert work to capture the exceptions and "move on" - since even after trying "verify" , "assert" loops, I still cant fetch this "find_element_by_link_text"
I tried using Xpath to build this "element" , but in the view Xpath (in firefox) - I see nothing, to clue why that happens (Of course I removed the namespace ":x" )
Other things I tried apart from implicity_wait(30):
find_element_by_partial_link(“Thinkpad”) and appending Unicode to this (wasn’t sure if it was reading the brackets ( , driver.find_element_by_link_text(u"Thinkpad Edge E530 (Black)").text, still did not work.
Related questions:
Answer
It happened to me before that the find_element_by_link_text method sometimes works and sometimes doesn't work; even in a single case. I think it's not a reliable way to access elements; the best way is to use find_element_by_id.
But in your case, as I visit the page, there is no id to help you. Still you can try find_elements_by_xpath in 3 ways:
1- Accessing title: find_element_by_xpath["//a[contains(@title = 'T430')]"]
2- Accessing text: find_element_by_xpath["//a[contains(text(), 'T430')]"]
3- Accessing href: find_element_by_xpath["//a[contains(@href = 'http://www.thedostore.com/laptops/thinkpad-laptops/thinkpad-t430-u-black-627326q.html')]"].
Hope it helps.