Selenium in Python encounters difficulty locating web element

I've been attempting to extract posts from a forum I found at this specific URL:

The main content I'm trying to pull is located within:

<div class="post-content">

However, no matter if I use get element to search by XPATH or CLASS_NAME, I keep encountering the following error:

NoSuchElementException

I've experimented with different methods and also checked out similar issues on SO, but so far I haven't found a solution that suits my needs. Any assistance would be greatly appreciated.

options = Options()
options.add_argument("--headless")
options.headless = True

def retrieve_posts(url):
    driver = webdriver.Chrome(options=options) 
    WebDriverWait(driver, 5)
    driver.get(url)                                                                            
#   posts = driver.find_element(By.XPATH, '/html/body/div[2]/div/div[6]/div[1]/div[1]/div[6]/div[3]/div[2]/div[2]').text 
    posts = driver.find_element(By.CLASS_NAME, 'post-content')
    return posts

SR_posts = retrieve_posts(url="https://www.thestudentroom.co.uk/showthread.php?t=7263973")
SR_posts

Edit: included an image of the HTML class 'post-content' containing the text HTML of webpage

Edit 2: Second image displaying inspect element details Inspect element of text body

pythonseleniumweb-scraping

Answer №1

Here is a helpful code snippet to extract the value of a post:

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

def retrieve_post_content(url):
    driver = webdriver.Chrome()
    driver.maximize_window()
    wait = WebDriverWait(driver, 5)
    driver.get(url)
    
    post_content = wait.until(EC.presence_of_element_located((By.XPATH, f"//div[@class='styles__PostContent-sc-1r7c0ap-3 kylDhV']/span")))
    
    return post_content

post_value = retrieve_post_content(url = "https://www.exampleforum.com/post?id=12345")
print(post_value.text)

Some tips for using Selenium effectively:

  • Always wait for the element before interacting with it.
  • Utilize Expected Conditions (EC) to ensure your element is accessible in the desired manner (e.g., EC.presence_of_element_located). You may need to adjust based on your specific requirements, such as waiting for an element to be clickable.

The provided code incorporates these two tips for optimal performance.

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