Check if specific element exists using Selenium

Selenium Python - Check if element exists

In this tutorial, you will learn how to check if an element with a specific locator exists in the webpage using Selenium in Python.

To check if an element exists in Selenium Python, find the element using a locator like type, id, or any attribute, or using XPath expression, with find_element() method. If the method returns an element, then the element exists, but if the find_element() method throws NoSuchElementException, then we can say that the element does not exist.

In the following code snippet, we use try-except to check if the element exists with the id='my-id-1'.

try:
    element = driver.find_element(By.ID, "my-id-1")
    print("The element exists.")
except NoSuchElementException:
    print("The element does not exist.")

Or if we use an XPath, then the code would be as shown in the following.

try:
    element = driver.find_element(By.XPATH, "//*[@id='my-id-1']")
    print("The element exists.")
except NoSuchElementException:
    print("The element does not exist.")

Make sure that in the program you import NoSuchElementException from selenium.common.exceptions.

Examples

In the following example, we shall consider loading the HTML file at path /tmp/selenium/index-11.html . The contents of this HTML file is given below.

index.html

<html>
  <body>
    <h2>Hello User!</h2>
    <div>First div.</div>
    <ul id="my-list-1">
      <li>Apple</li>
      <li>Banana</li>
      <li>Cherry</li>
    </div>
  </body>
</html>

1. Scenario where the element exists

In the following program, we initialize a webdriver, navigate to a specific URL, and check if an element with id="my-list-1" exists in the document or not.

Python Program

from selenium import webdriver
from selenium.webdriver.chrome.service import Service as ChromeService
from webdriver_manager.chrome import ChromeDriverManager
from selenium.webdriver.common.by import By
from selenium.common.exceptions import NoSuchElementException

# Setup chrome driver
driver = webdriver.Chrome(service=ChromeService(ChromeDriverManager().install()))

# Navigate to the url
driver.get('/tmp/selenium/index-11.html')

# Get the element
try:
    element = driver.find_element(By.ID, "my-list-1")
    print("The element exists.")
except NoSuchElementException:
    print("The element does not exist.")

# Close the driver
driver.quit()

Output

Selenium Python - Check if radio button exists - Example output

2. Scenario where the element does not exist

In this example, we are going to check if there is a paragraph in the document using By.TAGNAME as strategy and "p" as the locator for find_element() method.

Python Program

from selenium import webdriver
from selenium.webdriver.chrome.service import Service as ChromeService
from webdriver_manager.chrome import ChromeDriverManager
from selenium.webdriver.common.by import By
from selenium.common.exceptions import NoSuchElementException

# Setup chrome driver
driver = webdriver.Chrome(service=ChromeService(ChromeDriverManager().install()))

# Navigate to the url
driver.get('/tmp/selenium/index-11.html')

# Get the element
try:
    element = driver.find_element(By.TAG_NAME, "p")
    print("The paragraph element exists.")
except NoSuchElementException:
    print("The paragraph element does not exist.")

# Close the driver
driver.quit()

Output

Selenium Python - Check if radio button exists - Negative scenario example output

Summary

In this Python Selenium tutorial, we have given instructions on how to check if a specific element exists or not, with example programs.