How to Find Element Text within <span> using Selenium?

Question

I am pretty new to Python and Selenium, and I have got my script to do what I want so far, but I have this current coding from the website:

<a onclick="realPostBack('ctl00$ctl00$mainContent$ContentPlaceHolder1$ucHub$ucSearchExplorer$dgContents$ctl00$ctl04$lnkContent', ''); return false;" id="ctl00_ctl00_mainContent_ContentPlaceHolder1_ucHub_ucSearchExplorer_dgContents_ctl00_ctl04_lnkContent" class="hub-content-item" actiontype="Secondary" href="javascript:__doPostBack('ctl00$ctl00$mainContent$ContentPlaceHolder1$ucHub$ucSearchExplorer$dgContents$ctl00$ctl04$lnkContent','')"><span>How to Project Wirelessly in Philly</span></a>

and I can't get it to click the link.

I've tried:

driver.find_element_by_text("How to Project Wirelessly in Philly")

and partial text

driver.find_element_by_id("ctl00_ctl00_mainContent_ContentPlaceHolder1_ucHub_ucSearchExplorer_dgContents_ctl00_ctl04_lnkContent")

I've tried by tag but all returning errors. Looking up on here, I've seen stuff with Xpath but I have no clue how to do that, but if someone here does, then a little help with that, or any other simple code that hopefully allows me to click that link. (I know i will have to do .click() to eventually click it, but i cant even find the element yet)

Does this link appear on the page at page load, or does it appear after the user does something? — Greg Burghardt
– Greg Burghardt, Commented Apr 19, 2019 at 16:05

undetected Selenium · Accepted Answer · 2019-04-19 15:29:40Z

1

The desired element is a dynamic element, so invoke click() on it you have to induce WebDriverWait for the element to be clickable and you can use either of the following solutions:

Using CSS_SELECTOR:

element = WebDriverWait(driver, 20).until(EC.element_to_be_clickable((By.CSS_SELECTOR, "a.hub-content-item[id*='SearchExplorer'][actiontype='Secondary']>span")))

Using XPATH:

element = WebDriverWait(driver, 20).until(EC.element_to_be_clickable((By.XPATH, "//a[@class='hub-content-item' and contains(@id,'SearchExplorer')][@actiontype='Secondary']/span[text()='How to Project Wirelessly in Philly']")))

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

answered Apr 19, 2019 at 15:29

undetected Selenium

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2 Comments

Mike Over a year ago

It worked! Thanks for a quick response! I'm going to read up and learn more about it, but in kinda basic terms can you just explain what the 3 selenium webdriver things were needed and what exactly they kinda did? i know it may be a lot to explain, but just trying to understand what I just did to be able to use it in the future

undetected Selenium Over a year ago

@Mike Which 3 things do you exactly want to know about?

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