Selenium/python - fails to find partial link text

Question

Selenium with Python 2.7 on Windows 10 running the Chrome driver (as a script and from the python REPL) fails to find an element by partial link text, and I'm not sure why. When I look at the source code of the webpage in question, there is only one instance of WO20 in the entire page, and it's in a link, but selenium returns no such element.

Here's an example (the WO20 comes just after the href):

<a id="resultTable:0:resultListTableColumnLink" name="resultTable:0:resultListTableColumnLink" href="detail.jsf?docId=WO2015102036&amp;recNum=1&amp;office=&amp;queryString=FP%3A%28JP2014005719%29&amp;prevFilter=&amp;sortOption=Pub+Date+Desc&amp;maxRec=3" target="_self"><span class="notranslate"> WO/2015/102036</span></a>

The page has a few other links, but the one I need is the only one with the character combination WO20, so in theory this should be easy to identify. My guess is that selenium isn't recognizing this as a link, which is why partial_link_text isn't working. I've tried using xpath (successfully), but the problem is that that returns the n-th link in the table, and the links I need (I'm processing multiple documents) aren't in a fixed position.

elem = driver.find_element_by_xpath('''//*[@id="resultTable:0:resultListTableColumnLink"]''') ... I think. I just replaced it in the script with the other answerer's suggestion, so it's gone. My original code worked, in that it identified an element, but only by position in a table, and not by the content of the link. — Marc Adler
– Marc Adler, Commented Apr 30, 2016 at 13:49

Andersson · Accepted Answer · 2016-04-30 09:23:04Z

10

Actually, there is no link text that contain WO20! I think you confuse link text with href attribute of <a> element. You can find target element by link text/partial link text with following code:

driver.find_element_by_link_text('WO/2015/102036')

or

driver.find_element_by_partial_link_text('WO/20')

this XPaths should be applicable also:

driver.find_element_by_xpath('//a[contains(@href, "WO20")]')
driver.find_element_by_xpath('//a[contains(text(), "WO/20")]')

answered Apr 30, 2016 at 9:23

Andersson

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2 Comments

Marc Adler Over a year ago

I can't use the first one, because the numbers of the files are always different (although WO/20 is always the same), but the other three work. Thanks!

Riley Hughes Over a year ago

this answer is really unclear can you explain in more detail? Why is it that your solution works and his did not?

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