Contents
Find Element by Class Name
To find an HTML Element by class name attribute using Selenium in Python, call find_element() method and pass By.CLASS_NAME as the first argument, and the class name (of the HTML Element we need to find) as the second argument.
find_element(By.CLASS_NAME, "class_name_value")If there are multiple HTML Elements with the same given class name, then find_element() returns the first HTML Element of those.
1. There is only one element by given class name
In the following example, we have an HTML page with a div element whose class name is "xyz". In the Python program, we will find the HTML element whose class name is 'xyz', using find_element() method, and print that element to the console.
HTML Webpage
<html>
<body>
<p>Hello World!</p>
<div class="xyz">Read More</div>
</body>
</html>Python Program (Selenium)
from selenium import webdriver
from webdriver_manager.chrome import ChromeDriverManager
from selenium.webdriver.chrome.service import Service as ChromeService
from selenium.webdriver.common.by import By
# Setup chrome driver
driver = webdriver.Chrome(service=ChromeService(ChromeDriverManager().install()))
# Navigate to the url
driver.get('https://pythonexamples.org/tmp/selenium/index-49.html')
# Find element by Class Name
my_div = driver.find_element(By.CLASS_NAME, 'xyz')
print(my_div.get_attribute("outerHTML"))
# Close the driver
driver.quit()Output
<div class="xyz">Read More</div>2. There are multiple elements by given class name
Now, let us consider the scenario where there are multiple HTML Elements with the same class name. We will use find_element() function to find the first element whose class name is 'xyz'.
Even through there are three elements with the same given class name, find_element() returns only the first element.
HTML Webpage
<html>
<body>
<p>Hello World!</p>
<div class="xyz">Read More</div>
<div class="xyz">Report</div>
<div class="xyz">Next</div>
</body>
</html>Python Program (Selenium)
from selenium import webdriver
from webdriver_manager.chrome import ChromeDriverManager
from selenium.webdriver.chrome.service import Service as ChromeService
from selenium.webdriver.common.by import By
# Setup chrome driver
driver = webdriver.Chrome(service=ChromeService(ChromeDriverManager().install()))
# Navigate to the url
driver.get('https://pythonexamples.org/tmp/selenium/index-50.html')
# Find element by Class Name
my_div = driver.find_element(By.CLASS_NAME, 'xyz')
print(my_div.get_attribute("outerHTML"))
# Close the driver
driver.quit()Output
<div class="xyz">Read More</div>3. There is no element by given class name
If there is no element by given class name, find_element() function raises NoSuchElementException.
In the following example, we have taken an HTML page with no elements by name="xyz". When we try to find element by the name='xyz' using find_element() function, the function throws NoSuchElementException.
HTML Webpage
<html>
<body>
<p>Hello World!</p>
<div>Read More</div>
<div>Report</div>
<div>Next</div>
</body>
</html>Python Program (Selenium)
from selenium import webdriver
from webdriver_manager.chrome import ChromeDriverManager
from selenium.webdriver.chrome.service import Service as ChromeService
from selenium.webdriver.common.by import By
# Setup chrome driver
driver = webdriver.Chrome(service=ChromeService(ChromeDriverManager().install()))
# Navigate to the url
driver.get('https://pythonexamples.org/tmp/selenium/index-51.html')
# Find element by Class Name
my_div = driver.find_element(By.CLASS_NAME, 'xyz')
print(my_div.get_attribute("outerHTML"))
# Close the driver
driver.quit()Output
raise exception_class(message, screen, stacktrace)
selenium.common.exceptions.NoSuchElementException: Message: no such element: Unable to locate element: {"method":"css selector","selector":".xyz"}Summary
In this Python Selenium tutorial, we learned how to find an element by class name in webpage using Selenium.