CODEWITHSUNDEEP
pythonseleniumrandomhyperlinkhtml
rokpoto.com
rokpoto.com

Reputation: 10736

Click on random link in webpage using selenium API for python

How can I click on random link on a given webpage using selenium API for python. ? I'm using python 2.7. Thanks

Upvotes: 4

Views: 7702

Answers (3)

JJ88
JJ88

Reputation: 73

driver = webdriver.Firefox()
driver.get('https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhR3DwzV2eA')


# store the current url in a variable
current_page = driver.current_url

# create an infinite loop
while True:
    try:
        # find element using css selector
        links = driver.find_elements_by_css_selector('.content-link.spf-link.yt-uix-sessionlink.spf-link')

        # create a list and chose a random link
        l = links[randint(0, len(links) - 1)]

        # click link
        l.click()

        # check link
        new_page = driver.current_url

        # if link is the same, keep looping
        if new_page == current_page:
            continue
        else:
            # break loop if you are in a new url
            break
    except:
        continue

Creating a list work, but if you are having problems like me use this code if you keep getting Timeout Error or your webdriver isn't consistently clicking the link.

As an example I used a YT video. Say you want to click a recommended video on the right side, well, it has a unique css selector for those links.

The reason why you want to make an infinite loop is b/c when when you make a list of elements, for some reason, python doesn't do a good job expressing stored elements. Be sure you have a catch all 'except' b/c you will get Timeout Errors and such and you want to force it to click on the random link.

Upvotes: 1

Ansuman Bebarta
Ansuman Bebarta

Reputation: 7256

find_elements_by_tagname() will surely work. There is another option also. You can use find_elements_by_partial_link_text where you can pass empty string.

>>> from selenium import webdriver
>>> from random import randint

>>> driver = webdriver.Firefox()
>>> driver.get('http://www.python.org')

>>> links = driver.find_elements_by_partial_link_text('')
>>> l = links[randint(0, len(links)-1)]
>>> l.click()

Upvotes: 9

Mark Rowlands
Mark Rowlands

Reputation: 5453

How about generating a list of all available links on the page and then clicking a random element from within that list?

list = driver.find_elements_by_tagname("a")
list[random.Random(0, len(list)].click()

(I hope that's how you use random in python 2.7, I'm a python 3.3 user, sorry)

Upvotes: 0

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