Python and Selenium To “execute_script” to solve “ElementNotVisibleException”

Question

I am using Selenium to save a webpage. The content of webpage will change once certain checkbox(s) are clicked. What I want is to click a checkbox then save the page content. (The checkboxes are controlled by JavaScript.)

Firstly I used:

driver.find_element_by_name("keywords_here").click()

it ends with an error:

NoSuchElementException

then I tried “xpath” like, with implicit/explicit waiting:

URL = “the url”

verificationErrors = []
accept_next_alert = True

aaa = driver.get(URL)
driver.maximize_window()
WebDriverWait(driver, 10)

#driver.find_element_by_xpath(".//*[contains(text(), ' keywords_here')]").click()
#Or: 

driver.find_element_by_xpath("//label[contains(text(),' keywords_here')]/../input[@type='checkbox']").click()

it gives an error:

ElementNotVisibleException

Posts

How to force Selenium WebDriver to click on element which is not currently visible?

Selenium Element not visible exception

suggest it should make the checkboxes visible before clicking, for example using:

execute_script

The question may sounds stupid, but how can I find out the proper sentence to “execute_script” the visibility of checkbox from the page source code?

Besides that, is there another way?

Thanks.

by the way, the line html code looks like:

<input type="checkbox" onclick="ComponentArt_HandleCheck(this,'p3',11);" name="keywords_here">

its xpath looks like:

//*[@id="TreeView1_item_11"]/tbody/tr/td[3]/input

Answer 1

Alternative option would be to make the click() inside execute_script() :

# wait for element to become present
wait = WebDriverWait(driver, 10)
checkbox = wait.until(EC.presence_of_element_located((By.NAME, "keywords_here")))

driver.execute_script("arguments[0].click();", checkbox)

where EC is imported as:

from selenium.webdriver.support import expected_conditions as EC

---

Alternatively and as an another shot in the dark, you can use the element_to_be_clickable Expected Condition and perform the click in a usual way:

wait = WebDriverWait(driver, 10)
checkbox = wait.until(EC.element_to_be_clickable((By.NAME, "keywords_here")))

checkbox.click()

Answer 2

I had some issues with expected conditions, I prefer building my own timeout.

import time
from selenium import webdriver
from selenium.common.exceptions import \
    NoSuchElementException, \
    WebDriverException
from selenium.webdriver.common.by import By

b = webdriver.Firefox()
url = 'the url'
b.get(url)
locator_type = By.XPATH
locator = "//label[contains(text(),' keywords_here')]/../input[@type='checkbox']"
timeout = 10
success = False
wait_until = time.time() + timeout
while wait_until < time.time():
    try:
        element = b.find_element(locator_type, locator)
        assert element.is_displayed()
        assert element.is_enabled()
        element.click()
        success = True
        break
    except (NoSuchElementException, AssertionError, WebDriverException):
        pass
if not success:
    error_message = 'Failed to click the thing!'
    print(error_message)

might want to add InvalidElementStateException, and StaleElementReferenceException