How to use find_element_by_link_text() properly to not raise NoSuchElementException?

Question

I have a HTML code like this:

<div class="links nopreview"><span><a class="csiAction"
href="/WebAccess/home.html#URL=centric://REFLECTION/INSTANCE/_CS_Data/null">Home</a></span>&nbsp;•&nbsp;<span><span><a class="csiAction"
href="/WebAccess/home.html#URL=centric://SITEADMIN/_CS_Site">Setup</a></span>&nbsp;•&nbsp;</span><span><a
title="Sign Out" class="csiAction csiActionLink">Sign Out</a></span></div>

I would like to click on the link that has the text Home. As this Home link appears after login, I have a code like this:

from selenium import webdriver
from selenium.webdriver.common.keys import Keys
import re

browser = webdriver.Firefox() # Get local session of firefox
browser.get("http://myServer/WebAccess/login.html") # Load App page
elem = browser.find_element_by_name("LoginID") # Find the Login box
elem.send_keys("Administrator")
elem = browser.find_element_by_name("Password") # Find the Password box
elem.send_keys("Administrator" + Keys.RETURN)
#try:
elem = browser.find_element_by_link_text("Home")
elem.click()

The part till login works great. However the last but one line is problematic

elem = browser.find_element_by_link_text("Home")

It raises this NoSuchElementException where the Home link is there as you can see from the HTML code.

raise exception_class(message, screen, stacktrace)
NoSuchElementException: Message: u'Unable to locate element: {"method":"link text","selector":"Home"}' 

Any guidance as to what I am doing wrong, please?

Answer 1

Have you tried adding an implicit wait to this so that it waits instead of running to quickly.

from selenium import webdriver
from selenium.webdriver.common.keys import Keys
import re

browser = webdriver.Firefox() # Get local session of firefox

browser.implicitly_wait(10) #wait 10 seconds when doing a find_element before carrying on

browser.get("http://myServer/WebAccess/login.html") # Load App page
elem = browser.find_element_by_name("LoginID") # Find the Login box
elem.send_keys("Administrator")
elem = browser.find_element_by_name("Password") # Find the Password box
elem.send_keys("Administrator" + Keys.RETURN)
#try:
elem = browser.find_element_by_link_text("Home")
elem.click()

The implicitly_wait call makes the browser poll until the item is on the page and visible to be interacted with.