Best practices

  • Ensure that the ID used is unique within the HTML document to avoid selecting the wrong element.

  • Use By.ID instead of deprecated alternatives like find_element_by_id for cleaner, future-proof code.

  • Always verify that the element is present and visible on the page before attempting to interact with it to prevent runtime errors.

  • Use explicit waits (WebDriverWait) when working with elements that may load asynchronously.

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Common issues

  • Make sure the ID attribute in the HTML is correctly spelled and matches exactly with the ID provided in your Selenium script.

  • Update your Selenium WebDriver regularly to ensure compatibility with the latest browser versions, which can affect how elements are identified.

  • Check for changes in the web page structure during development, as dynamic content might alter element IDs.

  • Avoid using deprecated methods like `find_element_by_id` and stick to `find_element(By.ID, "id")` to future-proof your code.

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Useful resources

BeautifulSoup Tutorial - How to Parse Web Data With Python
BeautifulSoup Tutorial - How to Parse Web Data With Python
Authors avatar

Adomas Sulcas

2025-04-11

How to Find Elements With Selenium in Python
Enrika avatar

Enrika Pavlovskytė

2024-06-21

Web Scraping with Selenium and Python
Gabija Fatenaite avatar

Gabija Fatenaite

2024-06-13

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