How do I fill out a form using Python and Selenium?

Question

I am new to Python and wanted to use it for automatic login. I found https://automatetheboringstuff.com/chapter11/ and tried:

#! python3
from selenium import webdriver
browser = webdriver.Firefox()
type(browser)
browser.get('https://forum-studienstiftung.de/')
emailEl = browser.find_element_by_id(username)

Unfortunately, this leads to:

Traceback (most recent call last): File "", line 1, in emailEl = browser.find_element_by_id(username) NameError: name 'username' is not defined

According to the Firefox Developer Tools the correct ID is "username".

Answer 1

Wrap username in quotation marks. Right now you are passing in a variable called username which selenium is trying to match with an id on the page with the same value. Since the value is none, Selenium cannot find it hence the error.

Answer 2

The page you are trying to access takes time to load. You have to wait for the element to be visible before accessing it.

Try this :

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


browser = webdriver.Firefox()
type(browser)
browser.get('https://forum-studienstiftung.de/')
emailEl = WebDriverWait(driver, 20).until(EC.presence_of_element_located((By.id, "username")))