Useful pieces of code for using Selenium and dealing with common errors

Importing

from selenium import webdriver
from selenium.webdriver.common.keys import Keys
from selenium.webdriver.support.ui import Select
from selenium.webdriver.support.ui import WebDriverWait

Starting up a browser

# If you want to open Chrome
driver = webdriver.Chrome()
# If you want to open Firefox
driver = webdriver.Firefox()

But Python can’t find chromedriver

driver_path = '/Users/yourname/Desktop/foundations/chromedriver'
driver = webdriver.Chrome(executable_path=driver_path)

But Python can’t find Chrome/Firefox

options = webdriver.ChromeOptions()
options.binary_location = "C:/Program Files (x86)/Google/Chrome/Application/chrome.exe"
driver = webdriver.Chrome(chrome_options=options, executable_path="C:/Utility/BrowserDrivers/chromedriver.exe")

Visiting a page

driver.get('http://www.nytimes.com')

Typing in a form

text_input = driver.find_element_by_id('name_input')
text_input.send_keys('Katherine')

Fill out a dropdown

from selenium.webdriver.support.ui import Select
select = Select(driver.find_element_by_name('cityname'))
select.select_by_visible_text('Houston')

search_button = driver.find_element_by_id('sch_button')
search_button.click()

Scrolling (if you get an error something’s not in view, ElementNotVisibleException)

button = driver.find_element_by_class_name('load-more-btn')
driver.execute_script("arguments[0].scrollIntoView(true)", button)
button.click()

Trying to get something that might not exist

try:
  search_button = driver.find_element_by_id('sch_button')
  search_button.click()
except:
  print("It didn't work")

Getting text and attributes

# Get the text of an element
element.text

# Get the href of a link
element.get_attribute('href')

# Get the HTML inside
element.get_attribute('innerHTML')