selenium can't find the element

Question

I'm testing my webapp using selenium webdriver, but the driver can't find my element, the element's style is set to display:none visible,and I'm using xpath to retrieve that element here is my xpath

By.XPath(".//*[@id='box']/table/tbody/tr[3]/td[4]")

Please advise.

Many thanks

can you please add an html snippet of the area you're looking for. Plus, what driver you're using - i.e., HtmlUnit, Firefox, Chrome..? — Guy
– Guy, Commented Jul 18, 2011 at 9:21

Dennis Münkle · Accepted Answer · 2011-07-18 08:55:45Z

1

the tbody looks suspicious to me. This is often implicitly inserted by some browsers. I don't know anyone who uses it in html.

Therefore, you could try an XPath without it:

By.XPath("//*[@id='box']/table/tr[3]/td[4]")

If this doesn't help: Could you add an (X)HTML snippet?

answered Jul 18, 2011 at 8:55

Dennis Münkle

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Bohemian · Accepted Answer · 2011-07-18 01:05:29Z

0

Remove that leading dot:

By.XPath("//*[@id='box']/table/tbody/tr[3]/td[4]")

answered Jul 18, 2011 at 1:05

Bohemian♦

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1 Comment

domlao Over a year ago

Still failing, the By.XPath is giving me an empty string. The tr[3] element is invisible which is the style is in display:none. But I'm not use if that is that problem.

Guy · Accepted Answer · 2011-07-18 09:29:48Z

0

Maybe, for debugging reasons (and maybe not only for that) you should split up your xpath. For example (in pseudo-python):

tables = driver.findElementsByXPath("//*[@id='box']/table")
if len(tables) == 0:
   break

trs = tables[0].findElementsByXPath("/tr")
if len(trs) == 0:
   break

tds = trs[3].findElementsByXPath("/td") # or maybe trs[2]
if len(tds) == 0:
   break

td = tds[4] # or maybe tds[3]

answered Jul 18, 2011 at 9:29

Guy

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