How to Find Element by ID in Selenium Python?

Contents

Introduction
Scenario 1: HTML page with single element by given ID
Scenario 2: HTML page with multiple elements by given ID
Scenario 3: HTML page with no element by given ID
Summary

Find Element by ID

To find an HTML Element by id attribute using Selenium in Python, call find_element() method and pass By.ID as the first argument, and the id attribute’s value ((of the HTML Element we need to find)) as the second argument.

find_element(By.ID, "id_value")

Scenario 1: HTML page with single element by given ID

In the following example, we have an HTML page with a div element whose id="xyz".

index.html

<html>
 <body>
  <p>Hello World!</p>
  <div id="xyz">Read More</div>
  <div>Go Back</div>
 </body>
</html>

Python Program (Selenium)

from selenium.webdriver.chrome.service import Service
from selenium import webdriver
from selenium.webdriver.common.by import By

service = Service(executable_path="/usr/local/bin/chromedriver")
#initialize web driver
with webdriver.Chrome(service=service) as driver:
    #navigate to the url
    driver.get('http://127.0.0.1:5500/localwebsite/index.html')
    #find element by id
    myDiv = driver.find_element(By.ID, 'xyz')
    print(myDiv)
    print(myDiv.text)

Output

<selenium.webdriver.remote.webelement.WebElement (session="62c57767d8205c7ef6324359c2e74675", element="0246000a-73d1-426a-be39-60d97be601b9")>
Read More

Scenario 2: HTML page with multiple elements by given ID

In the following example, we have an HTML page with two div elements whose id="xyz". Even though we cannot have multiple elements with the same id, this scenario is quite possible.

If find_element() function finds more than one element by the given id, then it returns only the first element.

index.html

<html>
 <body>
  <p>First Article</p>
  <div id="xyz">Read More 1</div>
  <div>Go Back</div>
  <br>
  <p>Second Article</p>
  <div id="xyz">Read More 2</div>
  <div>Go Back</div>
 </body>
</html>

Python Program (Selenium)

from selenium.webdriver.chrome.service import Service
from selenium import webdriver
from selenium.webdriver.common.by import By

service = Service(executable_path="/usr/local/bin/chromedriver")
#initialize web driver
with webdriver.Chrome(service=service) as driver:
    #navigate to the url
    driver.get('http://127.0.0.1:5500/localwebsite/index.html')
    #find element by id
    myDiv = driver.find_element(By.ID, 'xyz')
    print(myDiv)
    print(myDiv.text)

Output

<selenium.webdriver.remote.webelement.WebElement (session="419b556f9fad1b755f5a55417fff42eb", element="4bba392c-46e3-4ad1-a101-56bdd35a9753")>
Read More 1

Scenario 3: HTML page with no element by given ID

In the following example, we have an HTML page with no element whose id="xyz".

If find_element() function finds no element by the given id, then it raises NoSuchElementException.

index.html

<html>
 <body>
  <p>First Article</p>
  <div>Read More 1</div>
  <div>Go Back</div>
  <br>
  <p>Second Article</p>
  <div>Read More 2</div>
  <div>Go Back</div>
 </body>
</html>

Python Program (Selenium)

from selenium.webdriver.chrome.service import Service
from selenium import webdriver
from selenium.webdriver.common.by import By

service = Service(executable_path="/usr/local/bin/chromedriver")
#initialize web driver
with webdriver.Chrome(service=service) as driver:
    #navigate to the url
    driver.get('http://127.0.0.1:5500/localwebsite/index.html')
    #find element by id
    myDiv = driver.find_element(By.ID, 'xyz')
    print(myDiv)
    print(myDiv.text)

Output

    raise exception_class(message, screen, stacktrace)
selenium.common.exceptions.NoSuchElementException: Message: no such element: Unable to locate element: {"method":"css selector","selector":"[id="xyz"]"}

Summary

In this tutorial of Python Examples, we learned how to find an element by id attribute in webpage using Selenium.