Selenium unable to locate button

Question

I am trying to click a button on a website in Python using Selenium. The html looks like this:

<a class="btn btn-default btn-lg primary-light-blue-btn" onclick="createReport()">Create report</a>

I have tried using:

l = driver.find_element(By.XPATH, "//button[@class='btn btn-default btn-lg primary-light-blue-btn']")

But I get the error:

NoSuchElementException: no such element: Unable to locate element: {"method":"xpath","selector":"//button[@class='btn btn-default btn-lg primary-light-blue-btn']"}

I have also tried other things, but it just won't find the button. Eg:

l = driver.find_element(By.XPATH, "//button[text()='Create report']")

I have also tried introducing a wait, but that does not help, eg:

l = WebDriverWait(driver, 10).until(EC.element_to_be_clickable((By.XPATH, "//button[text()='Create report']")))

Answer 1

change the tag //button to //a :

l = driver.find_element(By.XPATH, "//a[@class='btn btn-default btn-lg primary-light-blue-btn']")

Answer 2

As per the given HTML:

<a class="btn btn-default btn-lg primary-light-blue-btn" onclick="createReport()">Create report</a>

The element is a <a> tag.

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Solution

To click on the element with text as Create report you can use either of the following locator strategies :

• Using link_text :

   driver.find_element(By.LINK_TEXT, "Create report").click()

• Using css_selector :

   driver.find_element(By.CSS_SELECTOR, "a.btn.btn-default.btn-lg.primary-light-blue-btn[onclick^='createReport']").click()

• Using xpath :

   driver.find_element(By.XPATH, "//a[@class='btn btn-default btn-lg primary-light-blue-btn' and starts-with(@onclick, 'createReport')]").click()

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Ideally to click on the clickable element you need to induce WebDriverWait for the element_to_be_clickable() and you can use either of the following locator strategies :

• Using LINK_TEXT :

   WebDriverWait(driver, 20).until(EC.element_to_be_clickable((By.LINK_TEXT, "Create report"))).click()

• Using CSS_SELECTOR :

   WebDriverWait(driver, 20).until(EC.element_to_be_clickable((By.CSS_SELECTOR, "a.btn.btn-default.btn-lg.primary-light-blue-btn[onclick^='createReport']"))).click()

• Using XPATH :

   WebDriverWait(driver, 20).until(EC.element_to_be_clickable((By.XPATH, "//a[@class='btn btn-default btn-lg primary-light-blue-btn' and starts-with(@onclick, 'createReport')]"))).click()

• Note : You have to add the following imports:

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