Find 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 by 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]

About `browser.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 want to target only links on a page, you can use the methods provided in the links namespace. This in available at both the browser and element level.

Examples:

links_found = browser.links.find_by_text('Link for Example.com')
links_found = browser.links.find_by_partial_text('for Example')
links_found = browser.links.find_by_href('http://example.com')
links_found = browser.links.find_by_partial_href('example')

links_found = browser.find_by_css('.main').links.find_by_text('Link for Example.com')
links_found = browser.find_by_css('.main').links.find_by_partial_text('for Example.com')
links_found = browser.find_by_css('.main').links.find_by_href('http://example.com')
links_found = browser.find_by_css('.main').links.find_by_partial_href('example')

As the other find_* methods, these returns a list of all found elements.

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.