Unable to click on link using python and selenium

Question

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


# go to website
chrome_options = Options()
chrome_options.add_experimental_option("detach", True)
driver = webdriver.Chrome(executable_path="chromedriver.exe", chrome_options=chrome_options)
action = webdriver.ActionChains(driver)
driver.get('https://www.clinicalkey.com/#!/browse/book/3-s2.0-C2016100010X')

# look for "login" and click
loginclick = driver.find_element_by_xpath("//*[@id='header']/div[3]/ol/li[3]/a/span").click()

How come I'm not able to click on the login section on top right after navigating to the website given? I get an error:

Exception has occurred: NoSuchElementException
Message: no such element: Unable to locate element: {"method":"xpath","selector":"//*[@id='header']/div[3]/ol/li[3]/a/span"}
  (Session info: chrome=85.0.4183.83)
  File "C:\python\download.py", line 18, in <module>
    loginclick = driver.find_element_by_xpath("//*[@id='header']/div[3]/ol/li[3]/a/span").click()

Thank you !

rahul rai · Accepted Answer · 2020-08-29 14:04:31Z

1

Two reason:

1: Wait for element to load

2: As element is not visible on page use java script to click

driver.get('https://www.clinicalkey.com/#!/browse/book/3-s2.0-C2016100010X')
# look for "login" and click
loginclick=WebDriverWait(driver, 30).until(EC.presence_of_element_located((By.XPATH, "//*[@id='header']/div[3]/ol/li[3]/a/span")))
driver.execute_script("arguments[0].click();", loginclick)

Output:

answered Aug 29, 2020 at 14:04

rahul rai

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2 Comments

KKW Over a year ago

awesome! thanks! Can you please explain what does this (driver.execute_script("arguments[0].click();") mean?

rahul rai Over a year ago

As your element is hidden on the page, normal selenium python binding is not able to click it. So we have used Javascript to locate the element and click it. As to interact with web elements our normal script first converted into Javascript by binding and then perform actions as instructed. Sometime when it is not able to perform desired action we can use direct Javascript to do so.

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