find_element_by_css_selector() driver method – Selenium Python

Selenium’s Python Module is built to perform automated testing with Python. Selenium Python bindings provide a simple API to write functional/acceptance tests using Selenium WebDriver. After you have installed selenium and checked out – Navigating links using the get method, you might want to play more with Selenium Python. After one has opened a page using selenium such as neveropen, one might want to click some buttons automatically or fill a form automatically or any such automated task. 

This article revolves around how to grab or locate elements in a webpage using locating strategies of Selenium Web Driver. More specifically, find_element_by_css_selector() is discussed in this article. With this strategy, the first element with the matching CSS selector will be returned. If no element has a matching CSS selector, a NoSuchElementException will be raised.

Syntax – 

driver.find_element_by_css_selector("CSS Selectors")

Example – 

For instance, consider this page source: 

Now after you have created a driver, you can grab an element using – 

content = driver.find_element_by_css_selector('p.content') 

How to use driver.find_element_by_css_selector() method in Selenium?

Let’s try to practically implement this method and get an element instance for “https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/”. Let’s try to grab search form input using its id “GSC-i-id2”. 

Create a file called run.py to demonstrate find_element_by_css_selector method –  

Now run using – 

Python run.py

First, it will open the firefox window with neveropen, and then select the element and print it on the terminal as shown below. 

Browser Output – 

Terminal Output – 

More locators for locating single elements