Selenium Python StaleElementReferenceException

Question

I'm trying to download all the pdf on a webpage using Selenium Python with Chrome as browser but every time the session ends with this message:

StaleElementReferenceException: stale element reference: element is not attached to the page document
  (Session info: chrome=52.0.2743.116)
  (Driver info: chromedriver=2.22.397933

This is the code:

def download_pdf(self):
    current = self.driver.current_url        
    lista_link_temp = self.driver.find_elements_by_xpath("//*[@href]")
    for link in lista_link_temp:
        if "pdf+html" in str(link.get_attribute("href")):
            tutor = link.get_attribute("href")
            self.driver.get(str(tutor))
            self.driver.get(current)

Please help me.. I've just tried lambda, implicit and explicit wait

Thanks

elethan · Accepted Answer · 2016-09-17 03:28:26Z

1

As soon as you call self.driver.get() in your loop, all the other elements in the list of elements will become stale. Try collecting the href attributes from the elements first, and then visiting them:

def download_pdf(self):
    current = self.driver.current_url
    lista_link_temp = self.driver.find_elements_by_xpath("//*[@href]")
    pdf_hrefs = []

    # You could do this part with a single line list comprehension too, but would be really long...
    for link in lista_link_temp:
        href = str(link.get_attribute("href"))
        if "pdf+html" in href:
            pdf_hrefs.append(href)
    for h in pdf_hrefs:
        self.driver.get(h)
        self.driver.get(current)

answered Sep 17, 2016 at 3:28

elethan

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1 Comment

elethan Over a year ago

@LBdoc Glad to hear it!

lauda · Accepted Answer · 2016-09-16 22:02:46Z

1

You get stale element when you search for an element and before doing any action on it the page has changed/reloaded.

Make sure the page is fully loaded before doing any actions in the page.

So you need to add first a condition to wait for the page to be loaded an maybe check all requests are done.

answered Sep 16, 2016 at 22:02

lauda

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2 Comments

LBdoc Over a year ago

Thanks..I tried to use implicit and explicit wait without success..I tried even with time.sleep in order to wait for page load..

elethan Over a year ago

You are right that the elements are stale because they have been reloaded, but as far as I know it is not a matter of waiting for the items to load; once the go stale you must find_* them again.

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