How to resolve InvalidSelectorException in Selenium?

Question

selenium.common.exceptions.InvalidSelectorException: Message: invalid selector

Unable to locate an element with the xpath expression .//*[@id="Toolbar"]/table/tbody/tr/td[2]/a[1]/span)[3] because of the following error.

SyntaxError:

Failed to execute 'evaluate' on 'Document': The string 
'(.//*[@id="Toolbar"]/table/tbody/tr/td[2]/a[1]/span)[3])' 
is not a valid XPath expression.

• Yu Zhang: you will need to provide us with your HTML code too. Please avoid using absolute Xpath
• Yu Zhang: (.//[@id="Toolbar"]/table/tbody/tr/td[2]/a[1]/span)[3]), you have an extra ")" right after span
• Ankit Kumar: the xpath has 4 matching node so that [3] requires an extra ")".
• Ankit Kumar: driver.find_element_by_xpath('(.//*[@id="Toolbar"]/table/tbody/tr/td[2]/a[1]/span)[3])').click()
• Kshetra Mohan Prusty: Try with ((//[@id="Toolbar"]/table/tbody/tr/td[2]/a[1]/span)[3]), there seems to be a syntax error in your xpath.

Answer 1

The error shows that the given expression is not valid. You seem to have an extra ')' in the xpath selector at the end. So browser wouldn't have even performed the DOM selection.

• Ankit Kumar: Since the same xpath has 4 matching node i have used that extra ')' for using the 4th matching node.Is there any another way to do kindly help me with that.
• Dakshinamurthy Karra: How does adding an extra ')' help. You should be getting the 3rd span without that ')'.