How to track dynamically updating code using selenium in python

Question

How do I track dynamically updating code on a website?

On a website there is a part of the code that shows notifications. This code gets updates frequently, and I would like to use selenium to capture the changes.

Example:

# Setting up the driver
from selenium import webdriver
EXE_PATH = r'C:/Users/mrx/Downloads/chromedriver.exe'
driver = webdriver.Chrome(executable_path=EXE_PATH)

# Navigating to website and element of interest
driver.get('https://whateverwebsite.com/')
element = driver.find_element_by_id('changing-element')

# Printing source at time 1
element.get_attribute('innerHTML')

# Printing source at time 2
element.get_attribute('innerHTML')

The code returned for time 1 and time 2 is different. I could of cause capture this using some time of loop.

# While loop capturing changes
results=list()
while True:
    print("New source")
    source=element.get_attribute('innerHTML')
    new_source=element.get_attribute('innerHTML')
    results.append(source)
    while source==new_source:
        time.sleep(1)

Is there a smarter way to do this using selenium's event listener? new_source=element.get_attribute('innerHTML')

frianH · Accepted Answer · 2019-09-15 17:14:47Z

1

Try wait by selenium way with WebDriverWait, selenium provide a method .text_to_be_present_in_element, you can try following approach.

First you need following import:

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

Try the bellow code:

element = driver.find_element_by_id('changing-element')

# Printing source at time 1
element.get_attribute('innerHTML')

#something that makes the element change

WebDriverWait(driver, 10).until(expected_conditions.text_to_be_present_in_element((By.ID, 'changing-element'), 'expected_value'))

# Printing source at time 2
element.get_attribute('innerHTML')

But if it isn't found, it will return an TimeoutException error, please handle with try/except

answered Sep 15, 2019 at 17:14

frianH

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1 Comment

Esben Eickhardt Over a year ago

Thanks. It looks similar to my approach. I will try it out later today, and get back to you.

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