Chrome: different xpath from different machine

Question

I am using python with selenium for automation on windows.

I used inspect element to find a element and do some operation on it. It worked perfectly fine for me.

a= self.driver.find_element_by_xpath('//*[@id="dia2"]/p')

My colleagues followed the same method, but got a different xpath.

a= self.driver.find_element_by_xpath('//*[@id="dia4"]/p')

and his code didnt worked on his machine. When he repleaced dia4 with dia2- his code worked. Any idea, why we are getting different xpath from 2 different machines. We both used windows, same website, same element. What other factors determine xpath. I will check them on both machines.

are you sure that all dom of both pages exactly same- or is there any `geotargetting` — Learner, Nov 12 '15 at 11:30
Have you tried running the tests simultaniously? Because obviously you're accessing the diferent object/ or ID of the object was changed — Dmitry Malinovsky, Nov 12 '15 at 11:33
yes, running at exactly same time. The element is just a string, which does not change dynamically. — Saurabh Shrivastava, Nov 12 '15 at 11:36
yes, i have tried many times. Always work for me. Always work for my colleague with my xpath. Never works on my colleague with his xpath. — Saurabh Shrivastava, Nov 12 '15 at 11:54

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered Nov 12 '15 at 11:49

It is hard to describe without knowing the type of Exception that was thrown.

I had similar experience when I was running my test on mobile machines. The application code worked in a way it hid some DOM objects when resolution was different and shown those which were hidden. (DOM objects were visible to webDriver but were not displayed) I handled it by getting the list of elements that were matching my criteria and loop through them to find out which of them was visible.

Exception is : could not find element – Saurabh Shrivastava Nov 12 '15 at 11:52 — Saurabh Shrivastava, Nov 12 '15 at 11:52

Chrome: different xpath from different machine

1 Answers1