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find_element() driver method – Selenium Python

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Selenium’s Python Module is built to perform automated testing with Python. Selenium Python bindings provides a simple API to write functional/acceptance tests using Selenium WebDriver. After you have installed selenium and checked out – Navigating links using get method, you might want to play more with Selenium Python. After one has opened a page using selenium such as geeksforgeeks, one might want to click some buttons automatically or fill a form automatically or any such automated task. 

This article revolves around how to grab or locate elements in a webpage using locating strategies of Selenium Web Driver. More specifically, find_element() is discussed in this article. With this strategy, the first element with the id attribute value matching the location will be returned. If no element has a matching id attribute, a NoSuchElementException will be raised.

Syntax: 

driver.find_element(By.ID, "id_of_element")

Example:

For instance, consider this page source:  

html




<html>
 <body>
  <form id="loginForm">
   <input name="username" type="text" />
   <input name="password" type="password" />
   <input name="continue" type="submit" value="Login" />
  </form>
 </body>
<html>


Now after you have created a driver, you can grab an element using the below command as follows: 

login_form = driver.find_element(By.ID ,"loginForm")

How to use driver.find_element() method in Selenium?

Let’s try to practically implement this method and get a element instance for “https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/”. Let’s try to grab search form input using its id “gsc-i-id2”. 

Create a file called run.py to demonstrate find_element method: 

Python3




# Python program to demonstrate
# selenium
 
# import webdriver
from selenium import webdriver
from selenium.webdriver.common.by import By
 
# create webdriver object
driver = webdriver.Firefox()
 
# enter keyword to search
keyword = "geeksforgeeks"
 
# get geeksforgeeks.org
driver.get("https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/")
 
# get element
element = driver.find_element(By.ID ,"gsc-i-id2")
 
# print complete element
print(element)


Now run using – 
 

Python run.py

First, it will open firefox window with geeksforgeeks, and then select the element and print it on terminal as show below. 

Browser Output: 

find_element-driver-method-Selenium-Python

Terminal Output – 
 

terminal-output-find_element-method-Python-selenium

 

More locators for locating single elements

.math-table { border-collapse: collapse; width: 100%; } .math-table td { border: 1px solid #5fb962; text-align: left !important; padding: 8px; } .math-table th { border: 1px solid #5fb962; padding: 8px; } .math-table tr>th{ background-color: #c6ebd9; vertical-align: middle; } .math-table tr:nth-child(odd) { background-color: #ffffff; }

Locators Description
find_element(By.ID ,”value”) The first element with the id attribute value matching the location will be returned.
find_element(By.NAME ,”value”) The first element with the name attribute value matching the location will be returned.
find_element_by_xpath The first element with the xpath syntax matching the location will be returned.
find_element_by_link_text The first element with the link text value matching the location will be returned.
find_element_by_partial_link_text The first element with the partial link text value matching the location will be returned.
find_element_by_tag_name The first element with the given tag name will be returned.
find_element_by_class_name the first element with the matching class attribute name will be returned.
find_element_by_css_selector The first element with the matching CSS selector will be returned.


Last Updated : 23 Feb, 2024
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