Python Selenium program can't locate html element using XPATH or class name within twitter login page. Is it a problem with my explicit wait?

Question

What I want to do: Build a tweet bot for twitter.

My problem: My program is unable to find the text box to enter my username, even when I use explicit wait.

What I've tried:

1. Locating the element by class
2. Locating the element by name
3. Locating the element by xpath
4. Using explicit wait to make sure the element is on the screen before program continues.

My code:

from selenium import webdriver
from selenium.webdriver.chrome.service import Service
from selenium.webdriver.common.by import By
from selenium.webdriver.common.keys import Keys
from selenium.webdriver.support.ui import WebDriverWait
from selenium.webdriver.support import expected_conditions as EC

# getting webdriver path
s = Service('/Users/shannonslater/Desktop/Everything/Dev/WebDrivers/chromedriver101')
driver = webdriver.Chrome(service=s)

# navigating to twitter login page
driver.get('https://twitter.com/login')

# trying to click on the username text box
try:
    username_text_box = WebDriverWait(driver, 20).until(
        EC.presence_of_element_located(By.XPATH, '//*[@id="layers"]/div/div/div/div/div/div/div[2]/div[2]/div/div/div[2]/div[2]/div[1]/div/div/div[5]/label/div/div[2]/div/input')
    )
    username_text_box.click()
except:
    print("could not find username_text_box element")

# username text box is never clicked and "could not find username" is always printed

I am copying the xpath directly from the inspected html element:

Answer 1

The username field on Twitter Login Page is a dynamic element.

<input autocapitalize="sentences" autocomplete="username" autocorrect="on" name="text" spellcheck="true" type="text" dir="auto" class="r-30o5oe r-1niwhzg r-17gur6a r-1yadl64 r-deolkf r-homxoj r-poiln3 r-7cikom r-1ny4l3l r-t60dpp r-1dz5y72 r-fdjqy7 r-13qz1uu" value="">

---

Solution

To send a character sequence to the element you need to induce WebDriverWait for the element_to_be_clickable() and you can use either of the following locator strategies:

• Using CSS_SELECTOR:

  options = Options()
  options.add_argument("start-maximized")
  s = Service('C:\\BrowserDrivers\\chromedriver.exe')
  driver = webdriver.Chrome(service=s, options=options)
  driver.get("https://twitter.com/i/flow/login")
  WebDriverWait(driver, 20).until(EC.element_to_be_clickable((By.CSS_SELECTOR, "input[autocomplete='username']"))).send_keys("ShannonSlater")
  

• Using XPATH:

  options = Options()
  options.add_argument("start-maximized")
  s = Service('C:\\BrowserDrivers\\chromedriver.exe')
  driver = webdriver.Chrome(service=s, options=options)
  driver.get("https://twitter.com/i/flow/login")
  WebDriverWait(driver, 20).until(EC.element_to_be_clickable((By.XPATH, "//input[@autocomplete='username']"))).send_keys("ShannonSlater")
  

• Note: You have to add the following imports :

  from selenium.webdriver.support.ui import WebDriverWait
  from selenium.webdriver.common.by import By
  from selenium.webdriver.support import expected_conditions as EC
  

Browser Snapshot: