Unable to find element in Chrome browser

Question

I'm trying to learn Selenium. The code below should open fastmail in Chrome and allow me to search for the specified web element.

I can get this to work in the Python interpreter by entering the code line by line.

from selenium import webdriver
from selenium.webdriver.common.by import By
from selenium.webdriver.chrome.service import Service
from webdriver_manager.chrome import ChromeDriverManager

driver = webdriver.Chrome(service=Service(ChromeDriverManager().install()))
driver.get("https://www.fastmail.com/login/")

username = driver.find_element(By.ID, 'v17-input')

However, when I try to run it as a full Python script I am unable to find the element I am looking for. The error message is below.

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "C:\MyPythonScripts\test.py", line 9, in <module>
    username = driver.find_element(By.ID, 'v17-input')
  File "C:\Users\slong\AppData\Roaming\Python\Python310\site-packages\selenium\webdriver\remote\webdriver.py", line 856, in find_element
    return self.execute(Command.FIND_ELEMENT, {
  File "C:\Users\slong\AppData\Roaming\Python\Python310\site-packages\selenium\webdriver\remote\webdriver.py", line 429, in execute
    self.error_handler.check_response(response)
  File "C:\Users\slong\AppData\Roaming\Python\Python310\site-packages\selenium\webdriver\remote\errorhandler.py", line 243, in check_response
    raise exception_class(message, screen, stacktrace)
selenium.common.exceptions.NoSuchElementException: Message: no such element: Unable to locate element: {"method":"css selector","selector":"[id="v17-input"]"}
  (Session info: chrome=106.0.5249.119)
Stacktrace:
Backtrace:
    Ordinal0 [0x00801ED3+2236115]
    Ordinal0 [0x007992F1+1807089]
    Ordinal0 [0x006A66FD+812797]
    Ordinal0 [0x006D55DF+1005023]
    Ordinal0 [0x006D57CB+1005515]
    Ordinal0 [0x00707632+1209906]
    Ordinal0 [0x006F1AD4+1120980]
    Ordinal0 [0x007059E2+1202658]
    Ordinal0 [0x006F18A6+1120422]
    Ordinal0 [0x006CA73D+960317]
    Ordinal0 [0x006CB71F+964383]
    GetHandleVerifier [0x00AAE7E2+2743074]
    GetHandleVerifier [0x00AA08D4+2685972]
    GetHandleVerifier [0x00892BAA+532202]
    GetHandleVerifier [0x00891990+527568]
    Ordinal0 [0x007A080C+1837068]
    Ordinal0 [0x007A4CD8+1854680]
    Ordinal0 [0x007A4DC5+1854917]
    Ordinal0 [0x007AED64+1895780]
    BaseThreadInitThunk [0x76926739+25]
    RtlGetFullPathName_UEx [0x777A8FD2+1218]
    RtlGetFullPathName_UEx [0x777A8F9D+1165]

And I have not clue what it's about. The error message seems to imply that it is unable to locate the element.

Answer 1

I see 2 problems here:

1. You need to add a delay to wait for element's clickability. WebDriverWait expected_conditions is the right tool for this.
2. You are using a wrong locator.

This code worked:

from selenium import webdriver
from selenium.webdriver.chrome.service import Service
from selenium.webdriver.chrome.options import Options
from selenium.webdriver.support.ui import WebDriverWait
from selenium.webdriver.common.by import By
from selenium.webdriver.support import expected_conditions as EC
options = Options()
options.add_argument("start-maximized")

webdriver_service = Service('C:\webdrivers\chromedriver.exe')
driver = webdriver.Chrome(service=webdriver_service, options=options)
url = 'https://www.fastmail.com/login/'
driver.get(url)
wait = WebDriverWait(driver, 10)

username_field = wait.until(EC.element_to_be_clickable((By.ID, "v16-input")))
password_field = wait.until(EC.element_to_be_clickable((By.ID, "v17-input")))