Selenium - Stale Element Reference Exception when using element.click()

Question

Error Output:

selenium.common.exceptions.StaleElementReferenceException: Message: The element reference of <span class="a-size-medium a-color-base a-text-normal"> is stale; either 
the element is no longer attached to the DOM, it is not in the current frame context, or the document has been refreshed

I was trying to do the following with selenium:

go to amazon
search automate the boring stuff with python
click the first product title
if the price tag element, is on the product site, print it, and go back to the previous page
if it not available, go back to the previous page
go to the next product title and repeat from step 4

However it failed at click()

Code:

def experiment2():
    browser = webdriver.Firefox()
    browser.get("https://www.amazon.com/")
    searchelement = browser.find_element_by_css_selector("#twotabsearchtextbox")
    searchelement.send_keys('automate the boring stuff with python')
    searchelement.submit()
    time.sleep(5)
    elements = browser.find_elements_by_css_selector("span.a-color-base.a-text-normal")
    for element in elements:
        element.click()
        try:
            element = browser.find_element_by_css_selector("span.a-size-medium:nth-child(2)")
            print(element.text)
        except:
            browser.back()
            time.sleep(2)
            continue
        browser.back()
        time.sleep(2)

What could have caused this issue?

KunduK · Accepted Answer · 2020-04-21 16:30:00Z

2

Since you are using driver.back() it refreshed the page and the elements you have captured it is no longer attached to the page.you need reassigned the elements again.

Try below code

def experiment2():
    browser = webdriver.Firefox()
    browser.get("https://www.amazon.com/")
    searchelement = browser.find_element_by_css_selector("#twotabsearchtextbox")
    searchelement.send_keys('automate the boring stuff with python')
    searchelement.submit()
    time.sleep(5)
    elements = browser.find_elements_by_css_selector("span.a-color-base.a-text-normal")
    for element in range(len(elements)):
        elements = browser.find_elements_by_css_selector("span.a-color-base.a-text-normal")
        elements[element].click()
        try:
            element = browser.find_element_by_css_selector("span.a-size-medium:nth-child(2)")
            print(element.text)
        except:
            browser.back()
            time.sleep(2)
            continue
        browser.back()
        time.sleep(2)

answered Apr 21, 2020 at 16:30

KunduK

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1 Comment

Anonymous Over a year ago

Ahh, this fixes my issue ty

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