Can't click a button [Python + Selenium]

Question

I'm writing a program to automate some actions on a website using Python and Selenium and I need to click a button with this code:

<button class="button login" data-popup="login">Change User</button>

Using this

log_but2 = "//button[@class='button login']"
driver.find_element_by_xpath(log_but2).click()

I've tried many combinations of Xpath but neither of them can locate the button, in addition I don't get any error, simply the program continue like it has clicked on it and get another error. Someone can help me please?

Answer 1

you can't use the compound class in xpath.

Try below code

log_but2 = "//button[@data-popup='login']"
driver.find_element_by_xpath(log_but2).click()

• wmarchewka: You can use it by contains() function. For example xpath in this case could look like this: "//button[contains(@class, 'button login')]". But this is risky because this expression will find all buttons that contains in class attribute 'button login'. The same situation is with @QAMember hint. Solution for that could be to make xpath that will look for attribute and text in button, for example: "//button[@data-popup='login' and text()='Change User']" or with contains(): "//button[contains(@class, 'button login') and text()='Change User']"
• QAMember: @wmarchewka, your suggested solution also work fine.But attribute "data-popup" was given by developers for their back end purpose.So I don't think they will give duplicates in same page with same values.
• wmarchewka: trust me, if this is big Web application, sooner or later there will appear duplicates. I know this from my experience. If You create XPaths that should stay for a long time it's better to make them unique from the begging ;)