There is error “Invalid locator values passed in” in case we use find_element instead of find_element_by

Question

I\'m using Python-Webdriver to automate a \"click\" action. Here is my code:

from selenium.webdriver.common.by import By
from selenium import webdriver
from          


        

Answer 1

According to the api doc private method find_elements and find_element takes two parameters each and you are passing one which is obviously wrong.

And,

myDynamicElement = driver.find_element(NEWS_OPTION)

and

myDynamicElement = driver.find_element_by_id('blq-nav-news')

are NOT same. driver.find_element_by_id takes one parameter and thus this work and find_element takes two so that fails.

So, literally you should be using

myDynamicElement = driver.find_element(By.ID,'blq-nav-news')

EDIT

NEWS_OPTION = (By.ID, 'blq-nav-news') will return you ('id', 'blq-nav-news') whereas find_element() expects the first parameter to be the implementation of By class mechanism to locate the element not simply a string.

A direct call of NEWS_OPTION = (By.ID, 'blq-nav-news') has returned me a tuple and the attribute of By.ID which is 'id' A simple print out of NEWS_OPTION = (By.ID, 'blq-nav-news') provided me

('id', 'blq-nav-news')

And, here is the source of By class

class By(object):
    """
    Set of supported locator strategies.
    """

    ID = "id"
    XPATH = "xpath"
    LINK_TEXT = "link text"
    PARTIAL_LINK_TEXT = "partial link text"
    NAME = "name"
    TAG_NAME = "tag name"
    CLASS_NAME = "class name"
    CSS_SELECTOR = "css selector"

    @classmethod
    def is_valid(cls, by):
        for attr in dir(cls):
            if by == getattr(cls, attr):
                return True
        return False