for j in range(len(columns)): TypeError: object of type 'WebElement' has no len()

Question

for i in range(len(rows)):
    columns = rows[i].find_element(by=By.TAG_NAME, value="td")
    for j in range(len(columns)):
        if columns[j].text == "JKL":
            columns[0].click()

What is the problem of my code?

Answer 1

I think I see the issue, in this line columns = rows[i].find_element(by=By.TAG_NAME, value="td") you're only getting one element so it can't loop through it. Essentially it's saying columns = one column element with these attributes. .find_element() is the issue since it only finds one element.

Answer 2

The source of the error is that find_element() is returning a WebElements type. len() generally doesn't work on a webelement so you get an error.

If you were trying to create a list of rows which have the <td> tag then you would start by declaring the list as columns = [] just before the for i loop. The line to build the list would look like this:

columns.append(rows[i].find_element(by=By.TAG_NAME, value="td"))

which would give you a list of webelements.

That nested for j loop is probably not necessary; you can probably just compare each tag as you extract it from rows , but I think that find_element() is going to throw an exception on every line which does not have the tag. I'm guessing that you should probably be looking for an <a> tag rather than <td> . I don't have enough experience with Selenium to speak more competently, but I suspect that you're probably looking for something more along the lines of this:

for i in range(len(rows)):
    try:
        column = rows[i].find_element(by=By.TAG_NAME, value="td")
    except NoSuchElement:
        #we expect this exception; do nothing
        pass
    else:
        if column.text == "JKL":
            column.click()
            break

The break should get you out of the for loop.