Create Web Element Driver Method in Selenium Python

Selenium is a popular automation testing tool that helps to automate web browsers. It is commonly used to automate testing of web applications but it can also be used to scrape data from web pages. One of the key features of Selenium is the ability to manipulate web page elements such as text boxes, drop-down boxes, checkboxes, and radio buttons.

In order to manipulate web page elements with Selenium, it is essential to create a web element driver method in Python. A web element is an individual component on a web page such as a button, text box, or dropdown. It is essential to have a web element driver method to automate interactions with these elements.

In this article, we will show you how to create a web element driver method in Python using Selenium.

Getting Started with Selenium in Python

Before we dive into creating a web element driver method, let’s go through the basics of setting up Selenium in your Python environment.

First, you need to install the Selenium package. You can do this via pip by running the following command in your terminal:

pip install selenium

Next, you need to download a web driver for the browser you want to automate. You can do this by visiting the Selenium documentation and looking for the driver for the browser you want to automate. For example, if you want to automate Chrome, you can download the Chrome web driver from this link: https://sites.google.com/a/chromium.org/chromedriver/downloads

Once you have downloaded the driver, make sure to add its path to your system path so that Selenium can access it.

import os
from selenium import webdriver

#add the path of the chromedriver.exe to your system path
dir_path = os.path.dirname(os.path.realpath(__file__))
driver_path = os.path.join(dir_path, "chromedriver.exe")
os.environ["PATH"] += ";{}".format(dir_path)

driver = webdriver.Chrome(driver_path)

Creating a Web Element Driver Method

Now that we have set up Selenium in our Python environment, we can start creating a web element driver method. In the following code, we will create a method that takes two arguments – the driver object and the locator for the web element:

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

def get_element(driver, locator):
    try:
        element = WebDriverWait(driver, 10).until(
            EC.presence_of_element_located((locator))
        )
        return element
    except:
        return None

In the above code, we import the By, WebDriverWait and expected_conditions classes from Selenium. The By class is used to specify the type of locator we want to use. The WebDriverWait class waits for a specific condition to be met before executing the test. Finally, the expected_conditions class defines the expected condition that must be met for the test to proceed.

Our get_element method takes two arguments – the driver object and the locator for the web element. We then use the WebDriverWait class to wait for a maximum of 10 seconds for the web element to be present on the page. We specify the expected_conditions as the presence of an element located by the locator. If the element is present, we return it. If the element is not present, we return None.

Using the Web Element Driver Method

Now that we have created our web element driver method, we can use it to automate interactions with web page elements. In the following code, we will use our get_element method to locate and interact with a dropdown box on a web page:

dropdown_locator = (By.ID, "dropdown")
dropdown = get_element(driver, dropdown_locator)

if dropdown:
    dropdown.click()
else:
    print("Dropdown box not found")

In the above code, we first define the dropdown_locator as a tuple containing the By.ID and the ID of the dropdown element on the web page. We then use our get_element method to locate the dropdown box using its locator.

If the dropdown box is present, we use the click method to simulate a click on the dropdown. If the dropdown box is not present, we print an error message.

Conclusion

In this article, we have learned how to create a web element driver method in Python using Selenium. We first set up Selenium in our Python environment by installing the package and downloading a web driver for the browser we want to automate. We then created a web element driver method that takes two arguments – the driver object and the locator for the web element. Finally, we used our web element driver method to locate and interact with a dropdown box on a web page.

By using the web element driver method, we can easily automate interactions with complex web interfaces and improve the efficiency and accuracy of our web scraping and testing processes.