Making steps in a for loop sequential when using Python and Selenium

Question

I'm trying to loop through a list of links on a webpage, clicking on each using selenium, then copying a tinylink from each page before finally returning to the master list page. So far it will access the page, but I'm struggling to get the sequentiality of

click link-> load page-> click 'share'-> click 'copy'

Currently it's accessing the master list page and going straight to clicking 'share' before clicking into the first link. Maybe I'm overthinking this, as I thought sleep(1) would cut the program there until the next step. Please help!

#below accesses each link, opens the tinylink, and copies it
powerforms = driver.find_element_by_xpath("//*[@id='main-content']/ul")
links = powerforms.find_elements_by_tag_name("li")

for link in links:
    link.click()
    sleep(1)

    #clicks 'Share' button to open popout
    share = driver.find_element_by_id("shareContentLink")
    share.click()
    sleep(1)

    #clicks 'Copy' button to copy the tinylink to the clipboard
    copy = driver.find_element_by_id("share-link-copy-button")
    copy.click()
    sleep(1)
    break

score 0 · Accepted Answer · answered Nov 03 '20 at 21:24

Instead of sleep, you should use WebDriverWait, to be sure the element is present on the page, is loaded and interactive. Sleep doesn't take into consideration your internet speed etc.

from selenium import webdriver
from selenium.webdriver.support.ui import WebDriverWait
from selenium.webdriver.support import expected_conditions as EC
from selenium.webdriver.common.by import By
from selenium.common.exceptions import TimeoutException

driver = webdriver.Firefox()
driver.get(url)
max_wait_time = 10 #seconds

powerforms = driver.find_element_by_xpath("//*[@id='main-content']/ul")
links = powerforms.find_elements_by_tag_name("li")

for link in links:
    try:
        link = WebDriverWait(driver, max_wait_time).until(EC.presence_of_element_located(link))
        link.click()

        # clicks 'Share' button to open popout
        share = WebDriverWait(driver, max_wait_time).until(EC.presence_of_element_located((By.ID, 'shareContentLink')))
        share.click()
        # sleep(1)

        # clicks 'Copy' button to copy the tinylink to the clipboard
        copy = WebDriverWait(driver, max_wait_time).until(EC.presence_of_element_located((By.ID, 'share-link-copy-button')))
        copy.click()
        # sleep(1)

    except TimeoutException:
        print("Couldn't load element")
        continue

Making steps in a for loop sequential when using Python and Selenium

1 Answers1