How to check if element is present before continuing using selenium and python?

Question

How would I go about running a loop as long as a specific div-element is present on a website?

I need the parser to go through a number of pages and click next for each page - the last page is empty and thus lacks the aforementioned div-element, so I figured running this within a while-loop would be a good approach. I'm however not sure how I should make this properly.

What I currently have, though non-functioning, is:

test = driver.find_element_by_class_name("divClassName").size()

, and subsequently checking whether its size is while(test != 0).

Any suggestions would be much appreciated!

could you show what you got so far? stackoverflow.com/help/how-to-ask — Richy
– Richy, Commented Mar 23, 2017 at 11:51
Hi Richy, my bad, I've updated my question a bit - hopefully with additional clarity. I initially did not want to include things as it is not working, but having read the page I've updated accordingly. — Guy Montag
– Guy Montag, Commented Mar 23, 2017 at 12:03
thanks for the update, but would be even better if you could show us still more. How does the loop look? Maybe the solution could be something like while true: if not test: break — Richy
– Richy, Commented Mar 23, 2017 at 12:06
The way I've approached this has been to first code the parsing for one page, subsequently going through each page. I've now taken all this - which works on its own - and placed it within the aforementioned while-loop to ensure it only runs till the last, empty page. — Guy Montag
– Guy Montag, Commented Mar 23, 2017 at 12:12

Andersson · Accepted Answer · 2017-03-23 12:42:21Z

1

Try to implement below approach:

from selenium.common.exceptions import NoSuchElementException    

while True:
    try:
        driver.find_element_by_class_name("divClassName")
        # do what you need
        # click "Next" button
    except NoSuchElementException:
        break

With above code you'll be able to get new page and perform actions if <div class="divClassName"> is found, and stops otherwise

Also note that size is a property of webelement, but not a method. You should use it as webelement.size instead of webelement.size()

edited Mar 23, 2017 at 12:42

answered Mar 23, 2017 at 12:37

Andersson

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3 Comments

Guy Montag Over a year ago

This works -- thank you very much! Also thanks for the note on size, much appreciated!

user4679594 Over a year ago

Instead of while, is there a way to just test it only once or twice?

Andersson Over a year ago

Use for loop instead of while loop. E.g. for once in range(n): ... will run loop n times

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