Python selenium webdriver - unable to click an element by xpath at a single go

Question

I'm using selenium webdriver with python so as to find an element and click it. This is the code. I'm passing 'number' to this code's method and this doesn't work. I see it on the browser that the element is found but it doesn't click the element.

subIDTypeIcon = "//a[@id='s_%s_IdType']/img" % str(number)
self.driver.find_element_by_xpath(subIDTypeIcon).click()

Whereas, I tried placing the 'self.driver.find_.....' twice and to my surprise it works

subIDTypeIcon = "//a[@id='s_%s_IdType']/img" % str(number)
self.driver.find_element_by_xpath(subIDTypeIcon).click()
self.driver.find_element_by_xpath(subIDTypeIcon).click()

I have the browser getting opened on a remote server so there is sometimes timeout problem.

Is there a proper way to make this work? why does it work when same statement is placed twice

Answer 1

This is a common problem and the main reason to create abstract, per page helper classes. Instead of blindly finding elements, you usually need a loop which tries to find an element for a couple of seconds so the browser can update the DOM.

The second version often works because starting to load a new page doesn't invalidate the DOM. That only happens when the remote server has started to send enough of the new document to the browser. You can see this yourself when you use a browser: Pages don't become blank the same instant you click on a link. Instead, they stay for a while.