0

I am automating a website, and it has multiple searchboxes with the same title, class, etc. It usually occurs 2 or 3 times on every page. Is there a way in which I can tell Selenium to only use the 2nd or 3rd occurrence?

I currently have this:

driver.find_element(By.XPATH, './/*[@title = "Searchbox"]').click()

And

driver.find_element(By.XPATH, './/*[@title = "Searchbox"]').send_keys(i)

It currently clicks the first searchbox and types number i, but I want Selenium to do this for any other searchbox with the same html.

Thanks!

Improve this question
2
  • So there will always be something uniques about each searchbox, maybe 'label-hint', or 'text' etc. Once you find that out you will have to write custom XPaths to access them and perform the required actions. Commented Jan 23, 2022 at 11:54
  • Refer this to find out how to write custom Xpaths => stackoverflow.com/questions/70776928/… Commented Jan 23, 2022 at 11:55

3 Answers 3

Reset to default
1

Ideally your locator strategy should identify each and every WebElement uniquely within the DOM Tree.

As your Locator Strategy identifies 2 or 3 elements on every page, you need to construct a more canonical locator. However the following line of code:

driver.find_element(By.XPATH, './/*[@title = "Searchbox"]')

will always select the first matching element.

To click on the second and third matching element, you can use the following locator strategies:

  • To click on second match:

    driver.find_element(By.XPATH, "(.//*[@title = "Searchbox"])[1]").click()

  • To click on third:

    driver.find_element(By.XPATH, "(.//*[@title = "Searchbox"])[2]").click()
Improve this answer
Sign up to request clarification or add additional context in comments.

2 Comments

Thanks! I understand your logic, but you removed both of the ‘ at the beginning and and, and replace them by brackets. If I do this, I get the SyntaxError, and if I use them combined I get InvalidSelectorException. Do you know what I am doing wrong?
@Not_a_Robot Missed the double quotes, added now. Let me know the status.
0

To get some element by it's occurrence using xpath just wrap the xpath in (<your xpath>)[number] where number is the element occurrence number.

For click the second one:

driver.find_element(By.XPATH, '(.//*[@title = "Searchbox"])[2]').click()
Improve this answer

4 Comments

after 5 hours you have given the same answer which is already answered by 2 answerers. What addition does it add to the community?
@cruisepandey If still no any answer is accepted, they might be unclear to the person who asked. I've rephrased the answer in the way, how I think it's more clear. Is such behavior is a bad practice? No issue, I'll able to delete this answer.
No, that should not be required. I just wanted to know the thought process behind it. Cheers !
@cruisepandey I agree, your answer is good, so I'll try to be more careful in future, sorry.
0

As a last resort you can use xpath indexing:

if this .//*[@title = "Searchbox"] represent 1/3 nodes or 1/2 nodes

you can simply change it to

(.//*[@title = "Searchbox"])[2]

and use it like this:

driver.find_element(By.XPATH, "(.//*[@title = 'Searchbox'])[2]").send_keys(i)

to represent 2nd node

or [3] to represent 3rd node.

(.//*[@title = "Searchbox"])[3]

and so on....

This is not recommended but can be used as a last resort.

Improve this answer

Comments

Your Answer

By clicking “Post Your Answer”, you agree to our terms of service and acknowledge you have read our privacy policy.

Start asking to get answers

Find the answer to your question by asking.

Ask question

Explore related questions

See similar questions with these tags.