python selenium webscraping "NoSuchElementException" not recognized

python exception selenium selenium-webdriver

Sometimes on a page I'll be looking for an element which may or may not be there. I wanted to try/catch this case with a NoSuchElementException, which selenium was throwing when certain HTML elements didn't exist. Original exception:

NoSuchElementException: Message: u'Unable to locate element: {"method":"css selector","selector":"#one"}' ; Stacktrace: 
    at FirefoxDriver.prototype.findElementInternal_ (file:///var/folders/6q/7xcjtgyj32nfc2yp_y5tr9pm0000gn/T/tmp63Mz2a/extensions/[email protected]/components/driver_component.js:8899)
    at FirefoxDriver.prototype.findChildElement (file:///var/folders/6q/7xcjtgyj32nfc2yp_y5tr9pm0000gn/T/tmp63Mz2a/extensions/[email protected]/components/driver_component.js:8911)
    at DelayedCommand.prototype.executeInternal_/h (file:///var/folders/6q/7xcjtgyj32nfc2yp_y5tr9pm0000gn/T/tmp63Mz2a/extensions/[email protected]/components/command_processor.js:10840)
    at DelayedCommand.prototype.executeInternal_ (file:///var/folders/6q/7xcjtgyj32nfc2yp_y5tr9pm0000gn/T/tmp63Mz2a/extensions/[email protected]/components/command_processor.js:10845)
    at DelayedCommand.prototype.execute/< (file:///var/folders/6q/7xcjtgyj32nfc2yp_y5tr9pm0000gn/T/tmp63Mz2a/extensions/[email protected]/components/command_processor.js:10787)

Ironically, it won't let me catch this exception which it was throwing before? Code here:

elt = driver.find_element_by_css_selector('.information')
try:
    dat1 = elt.find_element_by_css_selector('#one').text
    dat2 = elt.find_elements_by_css_selector('#two')[1].text
    text = dat1 + dat2
except NoSuchElementException:
    text = elt.find_element_by_css_selector('#all').text
    item.set_description(text)

Error here:

NameError: name 'NoSuchElementException' is not defined

Googling/documentation came up with nothing...and it strikes me as strange that selenium is fine throwing an exception but can't catch it.


You need to import the exception first

from selenium.common.exceptions import NoSuchElementException

and then you can reference it

except NoSuchElementException:
    # handle the element not existing

If you would like to give details of the exception in your output then you can use:

except NoSuchElementException as exc:
    print(exc) # and/or other actions to recover

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