Exceptions – Selenium Python

Exceptions in Selenium Python are the errors that occur when one of method fails or an unexpected event occurs. All instances in Python must be instances of a class that derives from BaseException. Two exception classes that are not related via subclassing are never equivalent, even if they have the same name. The built-in exceptions can be generated by the interpreter or built-in functions. This article revolves around multiple exceptions that can occur during the run of a Selenium program.

Example –

Let’s demonstrate Exception by trying to find an element that doesn’t exist and click it at geeksforgeeks.org 

Python3

# import webdriver
from selenium import webdriver
from selenium.webdriver.common.by import By

# create webdriver object
driver = webdriver.Firefox()

# get geeksforgeeks.org
driver.get("https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/")

# get element
element = driver.find_element(By.LINK_TEXT, "abrakadabra")

# click the item
print(element.click())

Now, let’s run this program, it first open geeksforgeeks.org and then raise exception – selenium.common.exceptions.NoSuchElementException, which means that element doesn’t exist on the website. 

Exceptions in Selenium Python

Exceptions are of primary use when you are writing development-ready code especially which is at a high risk of causing a certain type of exception. So here is a list of all exceptions in Selenium Python.

Exception	Description
ElementClickInterceptedException	The Element Click command could not be completed because the element receiving the events is obscuring the element that was requested clicked.
ElementNotInteractableException	Thrown when an element is present in the DOM but interactions with that element will hit another element do to paint order
ElementNotSelectableException	Thrown when trying to select an unselectable element.
ElementNotVisibleException	Thrown when an element is present on the DOM, but it is not visible, and so is not able to be interacted with.
ErrorInResponseException	Thrown when an error has occurred on the server side.
ImeActivationFailedException	Thrown when activating an IME engine has failed.
ImeNotAvailableException	Thrown when IME support is not available.
InsecureCertificateException	Navigation caused the user agent to hit a certificate warning, which is usually the result of an expired or invalid TLS certificate.
InvalidArgumentException	The arguments passed to a command are either invalid or malformed.
InvalidCookieDomainException	Thrown when attempting to add a cookie under a different domain than the current URL.
InvalidCoordinatesException	The coordinates provided to an interactions operation are invalid.
InvalidElementStateException	Thrown when a command could not be completed because the element is in an invalid state.
InvalidSelectorException	Thrown when the selector which is used to find an element does not return a WebElement.
InvalidSessionIdException	Occurs if the given session id is not in the list of active sessions, meaning the session either does not exist or that it’s not active.
InvalidSwitchToTargetException	Thrown when frame or window target to be switched doesn’t exist.
MoveTargetOutOfBoundsException	Thrown when the target provided to the ActionsChains move() method is invalid, i.e. out of document.
NoAlertPresentException	Thrown when switching to no presented alert.
NoSuchAttributeException	Thrown when the attribute of element could not be found.
NoSuchCookieException	No cookie matching the given path name was found amongst the associated cookies of the current browsing context’s active document.
NoSuchFrameException	Thrown when frame target to be switched doesn’t exist.
NoSuchWindowException	Thrown when window target to be switched doesn’t exist.
StaleElementReferenceException	Thrown when a reference to an element is now “stale”.
TimeoutException	Thrown when a command does not complete in enough time.
UnableToSetCookieException	Thrown when a driver fails to set a cookie.
UnexpectedAlertPresentException	Thrown when an unexpected alert is appeared.
UnexpectedTagNameException	Thrown when a support class did not get an expected web element