Using selenium (Python) webdriver is unable to locate the text field. Throws up error for finding element by Class, Input Type

Question

HTML Code for the text bar is the following :

<input data-v-0401fc16="" type="text" placeholder="Choose company" class="search_in">

CSS for the bar is as follows, so I also tried to put in the [data-v-0401fc16] in order to get the element by class name.

.search_in[data-v-0401fc16] {
    width: 100vw;
    height: 34px;
    background: none;
    border: none;
    outline: none;
    color: #003a5d;
    font-size: 18px;
    cursor: pointer;
}

How do I get send keys to the bar, I am unable to do so using the following :

search = driver.find_element_by_class_name("search_in[data-v-0401fc16]")
search.send_keys("123")

The error I get using this method is as follows. I am not able to get the textbar element and unable to input text in it.

selenium.common.exceptions.NoSuchElementException: Message: no such element: Unable to locate element: {"method":"css selector","selector":".search_in[data-v-0401fc16]"}

In your case, the class name is only `search_in`, not `search_in[data-v-0401fc16]` — Maxime Charrière, May 04 '22 at 16:22
@MaximeCharrière Tried with``` search_in ``` but still shows up error. — Sarvesh Sharma, May 04 '22 at 16:25

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered May 04 '22 at 16:40

You can use BeautifulSoup to find elements in a page and Selenium only to get the page content.

from bs4 import BeautifulSoup
from selenium import webdriver
from webdriver_manager.chrome import ChromeDriverManager
from selenium.common.exceptions import WebDriverException
from selenium.webdriver.chrome.service import Service

try:
    driver = webdriver.Chrome(service=Service(ChromeDriverManager().install()))
except WebDriverException as e:
    print(f"{type(e).__name__} : {e}")
    return 1

driver.get(URL)

content = driver.page_source
soup = BeautifulSoup(content, features="html.parser")
matches = soup.findAll('input', attrs={'class': 'search_in'})

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered May 04 '22 at 17:01

You are using the below line of code to find a web element:

search = driver.find_element_by_class_name("search_in[data-v-0401fc16]")

specifically you are using a class_name with this value search_in[data-v-0401fc16]

Based on the html that you've shared,

<input data-v-0401fc16="" type="text" placeholder="Choose company" class="search_in">

Here

input -> is tag name

data-v-0401fc16 -> attribute name that has value as ""

type -> attribute name that has value as text

placeholder -> attribute name that has value as Choose company

class -> attribute name that has value as search_in

class name is just search_in not search_in[data-v-0401fc16] that's the reason you are getting selenium.common.exceptions.NoSuchElementException:

Solution:

Change class_name to css_selector

search = driver.find_element_by_css_selector("input.search_in[data-v-0401fc16]")
search.send_keys("123")

Note that . is to represent class, and basic CSS selector follows the below syntax:

tag_name[attr_name = 'attr_value']

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered May 04 '22 at 22:18

find_element_by_class_name() would accept a single classname as an argument. So you can't pass the attribute data-v-0401fc16.

Moreover the attribute data-v-0401fc16 is a dynamic attribute and may change when you would access the application afresh.

Solution

To send a character sequence to the element you need to induce WebDriverWait for the element_to_be_clickable() and you can use either of the following locator strategies:

Using CSS_SELECTOR:

WebDriverWait(driver, 20).until(EC.element_to_be_clickable((By.CSS_SELECTOR, "input.search_in[placeholder='Choose company']"))).send_keys("Sarvesh Sharma")

Using XPATH:

WebDriverWait(driver, 20).until(EC.element_to_be_clickable((By.XPATH, "//input[@class='search_in' and @placeholder='Choose company']"))).send_keys("Sarvesh Sharma")

Note: You have to add the following imports :

from selenium.webdriver.support.ui import WebDriverWait
from selenium.webdriver.common.by import By
from selenium.webdriver.support import expected_conditions as EC

Using selenium (Python) webdriver is unable to locate the text field. Throws up error for finding element by Class, Input Type

3 Answers3

Solution