How to find Element by XPath in Selenium Python?

Contents

Introduction
Scenario 1: Get First Div in the Body
Scenario 2: HTML page with multiple elements by given XPath
Scenario 3: HTML page with no element by given XPath
Summary

Find Element by XPath

To find an HTML Element by an XPath (language used for locating nodes in HTML) using Selenium in Python, call find_element() method and pass By.XPATH as the first argument, and the XPath value as the second argument.

find_element(By.XPATH, "xpath_value")

If there are multiple HTML Elements with the same given XPath value in the webpage, then find_element() returns the first HTML Element of those.

Scenario 1: Get First Div in the Body

In the following example, we have an HTML page with a div element. In the Python program, we will find the div element using find_element() method and XPath = '/html/body/div[1]'.

index.html

<html>
 <body>
  <p>Hello World!</p>
  <div>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 xpath
    myDiv = driver.find_element(By.XPATH, '/html/body/div[1]')
    print(myDiv)
    print(myDiv.text)

Output

<selenium.webdriver.remote.webelement.WebElement (session="cb3cf04980564db011ce9d6ebd0ef82e", element="fbb2d26a-1cfb-48af-8a18-f554dc86e355")>
Read More

Scenario 2: HTML page with multiple elements by given XPath

Now, let us consider the scenario where there are multiple HTML Elements that match the given XPath. We will use find_element() function to find the first element which matches with the given XPath '//div'.

Even through there are multiple div elements, find_element() returns only the first element of those.

index.html

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

  <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 xpath
    myDiv = driver.find_element(By.XPATH, '//div')
    print(myDiv)
    print(myDiv.text)

Output

<selenium.webdriver.remote.webelement.WebElement (session="b5a43ce51bea10f1438b4dfec969b559", element="465d82ec-4655-4276-bdc7-7fb0dd89572b")>
Read More 1

Scenario 3: HTML page with no element by given XPath

If there is no element by given XPath, find_element() function raises NoSuchElementException.

In the following example, we have taken an HTML page with no div elements. When we try to find element by the XPath='//div' using find_element() function, then the function throws NoSuchElementException.

index.html

<html>
 <body>
  
  <p>First Article</p>

  <p>Second Article</p>

 </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 xpath
    myDiv = driver.find_element(By.XPATH, '//div')
    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":"xpath","selector":"//div"}

Summary

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