This is my first post here! I am using Selenium’s Chrome Driver to send WhatsApp attachment to some people. Here is my code:
from selenium import webdriver import os from time import sleep link="https://wa.me/91xxxxxxxxxx" phnno="91xxxxxxxxxx" driver=webdriver.Chrome(executable_path=f"{os.getcwd()}\chromedriver.exe") #driver.get(link) #button=driver.find_element_by_xpath('//a[@title="Share on WhatsApp"]') #button.click() driver.get(f"https://web.whatsapp.com/send?phone={phnno}&text&app_absent=0") #This above line opens up the sender window in whatsapp attachbutt=driver.find_element_by_xpath('//span[@data-icon="clip"]') #This is line 15 #The above line is the one that is giving me the error attachbutt.click() sleep(10) forpdf=driver.find_element_by_xpath('//input[@accept="*"]') path="C:\Users\Deven\Desktop\test_file.pdf" forpdf.send_keys(path) #Attaches the file sleep(5) sendbutt=driver.find_element_by_xpath('//span[@data-icon="send"]') sendbutt.click()
ERROR:
DevTools listening on ws://127.0.0.1:56230/devtools/browser/1a8a2adb-37ee-4b0c-bedc-5cfb58559c24 Traceback (most recent call last): File "d:CodingPython ScriptsDr Nikhil Prescription AppPrescription GeneratorWA-testing.py", line 15, in <module> attachbutt=driver.find_element_by_xpath('//span[@data-icon="clip"]') File "C:UsersDevenAppDataLocalProgramsPythonPython39libsite-packagesseleniumwebdriverremotewebdriver.py", line 394, in find_element_by_xpath return self.find_element(by=By.XPATH, value=xpath) File "C:UsersDevenAppDataLocalProgramsPythonPython39libsite-packagesseleniumwebdriverremotewebdriver.py", line 976, in find_element return self.execute(Command.FIND_ELEMENT, { File "C:UsersDevenAppDataLocalProgramsPythonPython39libsite-packagesseleniumwebdriverremotewebdriver.py", line 321, in execute self.error_handler.check_response(response) File "C:UsersDevenAppDataLocalProgramsPythonPython39libsite-packagesseleniumwebdriverremoteerrorhandler.py", line 242, in check_response raise exception_class(message, screen, stacktrace) selenium.common.exceptions.NoSuchElementException: Message: no such element: Unable to locate element: {"method":"xpath","selector":"//span[@data-icon="clip"]"} (Session info: chrome=90.0.4430.212) PS D:CodingPython ScriptsDr Nikhil Prescription AppPrescription Generator> [16176:15752:0523/212201.236:ERROR:device_event_log_impl.cc(214)] [21:22:01.236] USB: usb_device_handle_win.cc:1054 Failed to read descriptor from node connection: A device attached to the system is not functioning. (0x1F)
It says it is unable to locate the element but I have bene very careful in inspecting the website and then writing the code. Still I wonder why it does not work. Can anyone please help me with what is it that I am doing wrnong? Thank You!
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Answer
Looks like you are missing a wait / delay before clicking that element.
The simplest solution is to put
sleep(5)
before
attachbutt=driver.find_element_by_xpath('//span[@data-icon="clip"]')
However, it’s much better to use expected conditions there. Like this:
from selenium.webdriver.support.ui import WebDriverWait from selenium.webdriver.support import expected_conditions as EC attachbutt = WebDriverWait(driver, 20).until( EC.element_to_be_clickable((By.XPATH, '//span[@data-icon="clip"]')))