Python Selenium Find Element by Name

Question

I am using Python / Selenium and am trying to select an input box that does not have an ID:

HTML

<div class="form-group">
    <input type="email"
           class="form-control"
           name="quantity"
           placeholder="Type a quantity">
</div>

Code

inputElement = driver.find_element_by_id("quantity")

What is the best way to select this element, by name?

Cordy

Possibly for newer versions when using find_element_by_name (Pylint): "E1101: Instance of 'WebDriver' has no 'find_element_by_name' member (no-member)". For example, Selenium 4.12.0. – Bakst

Related: Selenium - Python - AttributeError: 'WebDriver' object has no attribute 'find_element_by_name'. E.g., "Selenium just removed that method in version 4.3.0" – Bakst

Answer 1

find_element_by_name() method would fit here:

driver.find_element_by_name("quantity")

Irisation

The answer is almost in the title ;) – Oriana

now this is deprecated, use ind_element(by=By.NAME, value=name) instead – Crenate

Typos are unhelpful. It is at least find_element(by=By.NAME, value=name) – Bakst

Something like "from selenium.webdriver.common.by import By" is required for "By.NAME" to work. – Bakst

A question about the import. – Bakst

From an answer: "Do not add the "by=" and "value=" portion to the code." – Bakst

Answer 2

In September 2022 with Selenium 4.4.0 the correct answer would be:

from selenium import webdriver
from selenium.webdriver.common.by import By
driver = webdriver.Firefox()
inputElement = driver.find_element(by=By.NAME, value='quantity')

Shastashastra

Yes, the "from selenium.webdriver.common.by import By" line is crucial. Otherwise the result may be (Pylint) "E0602: Undefined variable 'By' (undefined-variable)" – Bakst

Though it does not work for a variable number of elements (dynamic content), say 0, 1, or 2: An exception is thrown, stopping the test run, if the element does not exist: "selenium.common.exceptions.NoSuchElementException: Message: Unable to locate element" – Bakst

And it, presumably, only returns the first element if there is more than one. – Bakst

Answer 3

I have used this method to collect attributes from elements many times:

for i in browser.find_elements_by_class_name("form-control"):
    print i.get_attribute("name")

Equilibrium

Answer 4

Preferable is to use explicit wait:

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


driver = webdriver.Chrome()
wait = WebDriverWait(driver, 5)
input_element = wait.until(EC.presence_of_element_located((By.NAME, 'quantity')))

More about waits here

Delirium

Why is it preferable to use explicit wait? – Bakst

Setting Explicit Wait is important in cases where there are certain elements that naturally take more time to load. If one sets an implicit wait command, then the browser will wait for the same time frame before loading every web element. This causes an unnecessary delay in executing the test script. – Delirium