Finding elements¶
Splinter provides 6 methods for finding elements in the page, one for each selector type: css, xpath, tag, name, id, value, text. Examples:
browser.find_by_css('h1')
browser.find_by_xpath('//h1')
browser.find_by_tag('h1')
browser.find_by_name('name')
browser.find_by_text('Hello World!')
browser.find_by_id('firstheader')
browser.find_by_value('query')
Each of these methods returns a list with the found elements. You can get the first found element with the first shortcut:
first_found = browser.find_by_name('name').first
There’s also the last shortcut – obviously, it returns the last found element:
last_found = browser.find_by_name('name').last
Get element using index¶
You also can use an index to get the desired element in the list of found elements:
second_found = browser.find_by_name('name')[1]
All elements and find_by_id¶
A web page should have only one id, so the find_by_id method returns always a list with just one element.
Finding links¶
If you need to find the links in a page, you can use the methods find_link_by_text, find_link_by_partial_text, find_link_by_href or find_link_by_partial_href. Examples:
links_found = browser.find_link_by_text('Link for Example.com')
links_found = browser.find_link_by_partial_text('for Example')
links_found = browser.find_link_by_href('http://example.com')
links_found = browser.find_link_by_partial_href('example')
As the other find_* methods, these returns a list of all found elements.
You also can search for links using other selector types with the methods find_by_css, find_by_xpath, find_by_tag, find_by_name, find_by_value and find_by_id.
Chaining find of elements¶
Finding methods are chainable, so you can find the descendants of a previously found element.
divs = browser.find_by_tag("div")
within_elements = divs.first.find_by_name("name")
ElementDoesNotExist exception¶
If an element is not found, the find_* methods return an empty list. But if you try to access an element in this list, the method will raise the splinter.exceptions.ElementDoesNotExist exception.