Wait for element to be clickable using python and Selenium

Question

There are ways to wait for an object e.g. a button to be clickable in selenium python. I use time.sleep() and/or WebDriverWait...until, it works fine.<

Answer 1

is there a way to set a default time lag globally, instead of implementing it on each object?

Yes, that's exactly what setting an Implicit Wait does. The implicit wait is used for the life of the WebDriver.

example:

driver.implicitly_wait(10)

info:

• https://www.seleniumhq.org/docs/04_webdriver_advanced.jsp#implicit-waits

Answer 2

You can do a few things...

1. Define a global default wait time and then use that in each wait you create.

   default_wait_time = 10 # seconds
   ...
   wait = WebDriverWait(driver, default_wait_time)
   

2. Inside of a method where you will use the wait several times, you can instantiate a wait, store it in a variable, and then reuse it.

   def my_method(self):
       wait = WebDriverWait(driver, 10)
       wait.until(EC.visibility_of_element_located((By.ID, "username")).send_keys("username")
       wait.until(EC.visibility_of_element_located((By.ID, "password")).send_keys("password")
       wait.until(EC.element_to_be_clickable((By.ID, "login")).click()
   

3. Define a default WebDriverWait instance and then just repeatedly use that.

   Note: if you are or will run your script(s) in parallel, you need to be very careful with this approach because an instance of WebDriverWait is tied to a specific driver.

   # some global location
   wait = WebDriverWait(driver, 10)
   ...
   # in your script, page object, helper method, etc.
   wait.until(EC.element_to_be_clickable((By.ID, "login")).click()
   

Answer 3

I come up with this:

def myClick(by, desc):
    wait = WebDriverWait(dr, 10)
    by = by.upper()
    if by == 'XPATH':
        wait.until(EC.element_to_be_clickable((By.XPATH, desc))).click()
    if by == 'ID':
        wait.until(EC.element_to_be_clickable((By.ID, desc))).click()
    if by == 'LINK_TEXT':
        wait.until(EC.element_to_be_clickable((By.LINK_TEXT, desc))).click()

with this function, the code:

driver.find_element_by_link_text('Show Latest Permit').click()

will be

myClick('link_text', 'Show Latest Permit')

instead.

I have run a couple weeks with hundreds of elements to click, I have not seen the errors any longer.