Selenium script sends Keys but won't meet 'if' condition for presence of elements in newly opened tab

Question

I am trying to have the script determine whether an element (in this case the email input space) is present or not. The driver is in the right place as it sends Keys to the right place, but it won't meet the if condition shown below. I tried to do this with try/except statement and with a find_elements() method too. Nothing works. The element is not detected I get a Timeout error probably because of the expected_condition statement. The newly opened Chrome tab is a Microsoft Login page if this can help.

My code:

def check_need_to_sign_in():

    new_tab = driver.window_handles
    driver.switch_to.window(str(new_tab[-1]))
    print(driver.current_url)
    element_present = EC.presence_of_element_located((By.XPATH, "//input[@class='form-control ltr_override input ext-input text-box ext-text-box']")) # WON'T DETECT ELEMENT):
    WebDriverWait(driver, timeout).until(element_present)
    if driver.find_elements(By.CSS_SELECTOR, "input.form-control ltr_override input ext-input text-box ext-text-box"):  # WON'T DETECT ELEMENT)
        print("Element exists")
        sign_in()
    else:
        print("Element does not exist")

undetected Selenium · Accepted Answer · 2021-11-26T14:09:57.547

1

To start with driver.switch_to.window(str(new_tab[-1])) isn't the ideal way to switch between window_handles. Instead you need to use List Comprehension to locate the new window as follows:

window_before = driver.current_window_handle
print("First Window Handle is : %s" %window_before)
driver.execute_script("window.open('','_blank');")
WebDriverWait(driver, 10).until(EC.number_of_windows_to_be(2))
windows_after = driver.window_handles
new_window = [x for x in windows_after if x != window_before][0]
driver.switch_to.window(new_window)

Now, as per the XPath and/or CssSelector it seems you are probing an <input> element with form-control and text-box classnames and possibly it's a clickable element. In those cases, instead of presence_of_element_located() you need to induce WebDriverWait for the element_to_be_clickable() and you can use either of the following Locator Strategies:

try:
    WebDriverWait(driver, 20).until(EC.element_to_be_clickable((By.XPATH, "//input[@class='form-control ltr_override input ext-input text-box ext-text-box']")))
    print("Clickable element was found")
    
except TimeoutException:
    print("Clickable element wasn't found")

edited Nov 26 '21 at 14:09

answered Nov 26 '21 at 08:00

undetected Selenium

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`try-catch` is the best approach but I answered as per OP's logic. – Nandan A Nov 26 '21 at 09:48
1

This worked, thanks. Could you elaborate more on your answer? How can the clickable element be located for the script to send it keys and not for the `try/else` statement? In other words where does the gap between the element being present (`presence_of_element_located()`) and it being clickable (`element_to_be_clickable()`) come from? – double_wizz Nov 26 '21 at 12:04
1

@double_wizz `presence_of_element_located` means the element presents on DOM but not visible (for example on clicking a button a link is hidden, we can say that link is present on DOM but not visible or clickable). `element_to_be_clickable` means the element is visible on DOM and should be clickable (clickable examples are like button, drop-down, radio button etc. Non-clickable example like text, hidden links etc.) – Nandan A Nov 26 '21 at 12:33
@double_wizz Now find the links to the required discussions embedded. – undetected Selenium Nov 26 '21 at 14:11

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Nov 26 '21 at 07:27

The find_elements method doesn't have the return type as boolean that's why your if condition is not working. It's return type is List. If the element is not found then it will return the List size as 0 after TimeOut. From documentation,

This method will return as soon as there are more than 0 items in the found collection, or will return an empty list if the timeout is reached.

@see org.openqa.selenium.WebDriver.Timeouts

You can do like below,

elements = driver.find_elements(By.CSS_SELECTOR, "input.form-control ltr_override input ext-input text-box ext-text-box")
    
if elements.size > 0 :
   print("Element exists")
   sign_in()
else:
   print("Element does not exist")

Selenium script sends Keys but won't meet 'if' condition for presence of elements in newly opened tab

2 Answers2