A guide on how to extract the element id containing a random string in Selenium

While utilizing Selenium with Python, I am attempting to input a value into the textarea using send_keys. However, I am facing difficulty in obtaining the id as it contains a random string.

<div class="XiG xcv L4E zI7 iyn Hsu">
    <textarea class="TextArea__textArea TextArea__bold TextArea__enabled TextArea__large TextArea__wrap" id="pin-draft-title-7cd7d98c-0494-4cbb-98e3-12658ba8e175" placeholder="Add your title" rows="1" style="height: 65px;">
    </textarea>
    
    <div class="MIw QLY Rym ojN p6V zI7 iyn Hsu" style="pointer-events: none;">
    <div class="TextArea__textArea TextArea__dark TextArea__bold TextArea__large TextArea__wrap">
    </div>
    </div>
    </div>
    <div class=""><div class="xcv L4E zI7 iyn Hsu" style="box-shadow: rgba(142, 142, 142, 0.5) 0px 1px 0px 0px; padding-top: 8px;">
    </div>
    <div class="hDW xcv L4E zI7 iyn Hsu" style="min-height: 15px;"></div>
</div>

I am attempting to retrieve the following id:

id="pin-draft-title-7cd7d98c-0494-4cbb-98e3-12658ba8e175"

This is my send_keys code:

self.send_keys('//textarea[contains(@id, "pin-draft-title-")]', data.title)

I have tried using 'contains' and 'starts-with' but they do not seem to work.

I encountered this error:

Stacktrace:
Backtrace:
    Ordinal0 [0x0021ACD3+2075859]
    Ordinal0 [0x001AEE61+1633889]
    ...

Please provide assistance. Thank you.

pythonseleniumxpathcss-selectorswebdriverwait

Answer №1

To retrieve the id attribute value, which is 

pin-draft-title-7cd7d98c-0494-4cbb-98e3-12658ba8e175
, you'll need to use a WebDriverWait for the method visibility_of_element_located(). You can choose from these two locator strategies:

  • Using CSS_SELECTOR:

    print(WebDriverWait(driver, 20).until(EC.visibility_of_element_located((By.CSS_SELECTOR, "textarea.TextArea__textArea.TextArea__bold.TextArea__enabled.TextArea__large.TextArea__wrap[placeholder='Add your title']"))).get_attribute("id"))

  • Using XPATH:

    print(WebDriverWait(driver, 20).util(EC.visibility_of_element_located((By.XPATH, "//textarea[@class='TextArea__textArea TextArea__bold TextArea__enabled TextArea__large TextArea__wrap' and @placeholder='Add your title']"))).get_attribute("id"))

  • Note : Don't forget to import the following :

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

If you're interested, check out this discussion on Python Selenium - get href value

Answer №2

Here is a helpful XPath expression to locate the desired element:

//textarea[@class='TextArea__textArea TextArea__bold TextArea__enabled TextArea__large TextArea__wrap']

To use this XPath, you can implement it in your code like so:

element = driver.find_element(By.XPATH, "//textarea[@class='TextArea__textArea TextArea__bold TextArea__enabled TextArea__large TextArea__wrap']")
element.send_keys("Your text here")

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