[FIXED] Selenium (Python) - NoSuchElementException: Message: no such element: Unable to locate element

Issue

I'm trying to make a simple script that goes to the homepage of The Whiskey Exchange, clicks on the following menu item, navigates to the new page and finally grabs a screenshot.

from selenium import webdriver
from selenium.webdriver.chrome.service import Service
from webdriver_manager.chrome import ChromeDriverManager
from selenium.webdriver.chrome.options import Options
from selenium.webdriver.common.by import By

chrome_options = Options()

driver = webdriver.Chrome(options=chrome_options)
driver.get("https://www.thewhiskyexchange.com/")
driver.implicitly_wait(3)

search_bar = driver.find_element(
    By.XPATH, "/html/body/div[3]/nav/div/div[3]/div/div/div[2]/a[2]")
search_bar.click()
driver.implicitly_wait(3)

driver.save_screenshot('./image.png')
driver.quit()

I've tried multiple approaches to get this to work, mainly by changing the type of finder, but with no luck. I've tried copying both XPATH and Full XPATH (directly from chrome), but that hasn't worked either. Maybe it's something to do with how the site is built, but no idea.

I'm getting the following error message:

NoSuchElementException: Message: no such element: Unable to locate element: {"method":"xpath","selector":"/html/body/div[3]/nav/div/div[3]/div/div/div[2]/a[2]"}

First time using selenium, so the struggle is a bit real. Please help.

Solution

To expand the Scotch Whisky menu you don't need to click on the item, instead you can simply Mouse Hover and grab a screenshot of the webpage using either of the following Locator Strategies:

• Using CSS_SELECTOR:

  driver.get('https://www.thewhiskyexchange.com/')
  ActionChains(driver).move_to_element(WebDriverWait(driver, 20).until(EC.visibility_of_element_located((By.CSS_SELECTOR, "a[title='Scotch Whisky']")))).perform()
  driver.save_screenshot('./Scotch_Whisky.png')
  driver.quit()
  

• Using XPATH:

  driver.get('https://www.thewhiskyexchange.com/')
  ActionChains(driver).move_to_element(WebDriverWait(driver, 20).until(EC.visibility_of_element_located((By.XPATH, "//a[@title='Scotch Whisky']")))).perform()
  driver.save_screenshot('./Scotch_Whisky.png')
  driver.quit()
  

• Note : You have to add the following imports :

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

• Screenshot:

Answered By - undetected Selenium