How to handle dynamic xpath in selenium (python)

Question

I am automating a website, I have few 6 digit numbers (for example - 111111, 222222, 333333)

If I am taking 111111 (inside a for loop) and identifying a path :

driver.find_element_by_xpath("//a[@class='button' and @title='Create Work Item Copy']").click()

for first time it is able to find it and click on it, but when the loop is running second time and so on (for 222222, 333333, ...n)I am getting :

Message: no such element: Unable to locate element: {"method":"xpath","selector":"//a[@class='button' and @title='Create Work Item Copy']"}

The above error message is for the button I want to click, upon check the "Inspect Element",

I found that the "id" is changing for every iteration for loop is doing.

<span class="jazz-ui-toolbar-Button" **id="jazz_ui_toolbar_Button_16"** widgetid="jazz_ui_toolbar_Button_16" style=""><a class="button" dojoattachpoint="titleNode,focusNode" href="#" dojoattachevent="onclick:_onClick,onkeypress:_onKeyPress" role="button" title="Create Work Item Copy" aria-disabled="false" tabindex="-1"><img src="/ccm/web/dojo/resources/blank.gif?etag=azf6UBC" class="button-img sprite-image-15" alt="Create Work Item Copy"><span class="button-label" dojoattachpoint="_label" style="display:none"></span></a>

you see in above HTML, the "id" is id="jazz_ui_toolbar_Button_16" is 16 for 1st iteration for for loop, but for second this 16 will become some random number on 2nd iteration of for loop and so on.

Hence I am getting the error.

I tried using absolute xpath, no good. Please help.

If you need any more information, let me know.

frianH · Accepted Answer · 2020-03-20 04:05:16Z

1

Use contains function:

driver.find_element_by_xpath("//span[contains(@id, 'jazz_ui_toolbar_Button_')]").click()

*UPDATE

If there are multiple element, you can use sequence [number] in the last xpath like this:

driver.find_element_by_xpath("(//span[contains(@id, 'jazz_ui_toolbar_Button_')])[1]").click()

Or use .find_elements:

elements = driver.find_elements_by_xpath("//span[contains(@id, 'jazz_ui_toolbar_Button_')]")
#elements[index].click()
elements[0].click()

The above refers to the first element.

edited Mar 20, 2020 at 4:05

answered Mar 18, 2020 at 9:06

frianH

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2 Comments

Sharad esdee Dutta Over a year ago

Hi, frianH, I have tried using contains keyword but didn't help because there are multiple instances of this xpath, I need a way to select the first occurance of this xpath, like by using index or something.

frianH Over a year ago

@sh4r4d Please see the updated code, hope it helps.

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