How to Deal With Changing Elements In XPath?

Question

My Code is:

bar = browser.find_element_by_xpath("//*[@id='ember26']/input")

But it changes every time I login. I can login with my codes but inside the LinkedIn, search bar XPath changes, like ;

//*[@id='ember16']/input or something else.

Any help is appreciated.

Answer 1

xpath:

//*[contains(@id,"ember")]/input

or

//*[starts-with(@id,"ember")]/input

css

[id*="ember"]>input

or

[id^="ember"]>input

• is css for contains and ^ start with for css

you can use any of the above locator to find the search field in linkedin

Answer 2

You can use partial matches with css selectors. So where you have id=ember26 above, in that case, you could use:

css=input[id^='ember'] (the ^ means starts with)

You can also use endswidth, and contains.

A great write up I found on all the different ways of handling dynamic cases will hopefully help.