Message: no such element: Unable to locate element: {"method":"xpath","selector":"/html/body/div[2]/div[2]/div/div[3]/div[2]/div/div/div[2]/a[1]"}

Question

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

print('\n')
print("PROGRAM STARTING")
print('~~~~~~')
print('\n')
# initiate driver
driver = webdriver.Chrome()
driver.get('http://arcselfservice.sbcounty.gov/web/user/disclaimer')

#begin
driver.find_element_by_xpath('//*[@id="submitDisclaimerAccept"]').click()
driver.find_element_by_xpath('/html/body/div[2]/div[2]/div/div[3]/div[2]/div/div/div[2]/a[1]').click()

I have been stuck on this error for a long time, for some reason it can't find the element even though I am specifying the xpath. There doesn't seem to be any iframes, and implicit or explicit wait doesn't work either. Please help.

Answer 1

So the issue was waiting for the element to come up and then clicking it.

WebDriverWait(driver, 10).until(EC.element_to_be_clickable((By.XPATH, "/html/body/div[2]/div[2]/div/div[3]/div[2]/div/div/div[2]/a[1]"))).click()

Another way if you want to change to the other tags later.

path = "//a/div/h1[text()='{}']/../..".format("Fictitious Business Names Application")
WebDriverWait(driver, 10).until(EC.element_to_be_clickable((By.XPATH ,path))).click()

Import

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

Answer 2

The error is coming because the element is taking time to be available for use. Kindly use the explicit wait for the element extraction.

A small snippet can be:

WebDriverWait(driver, 10).until(EC.presence_of_element_located((By.XPATH ,'/html/body/div[2]/div[2]/div/div[3]/div[2]/div/div/div[2]/a[1]'))).click()

Just dont forget to import

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