Question

I have created a list of elements matching an xpath and would like to click through each successively. However, if I use the get_attribute("href") command I get a ‘unicode’ object has no attribute ‘click’ error. This is because href is a string. If I don’t use get_attribute and simply use this command:

driver.find_elements_by_xpath(".//div/div/div[3]/table//tr[12]/td/table//tr/td/a")

I get a list full of elements. I can successfully click on the first link in the list; however, when I click on the second I get this error: ‘Element not
found in the cache – perhaps the page has changed since it was looked up’
I imagine that the reason that the page links I am trying to iterate through are generated via a search query into java (this is one of the href links:

javascript:__doPostBack('ctl00$Content$listJobsByAll1$GridView2','Page$3') )

One more piece of relevant information: there are only two attributes at this xpath location: href and the text.

So, given that I am dealing with a java website and only the two attributes, I am hoping someone can tell me which webdriver commands I can use to get a series of clickable static links. Beyond a specific answer, any advice on how I could have figured this out myself would be helpful.

Answer 1

if you click on a link with selenium, you are changing the current page. The page that you are directed to doesn’t have the next element.

to get links use:

'.//tag/@href'

you can try:

for elem in elems:
    elem.click()
    print browser.current_url
    browser.back()