Unable to find element in selenium

Question

I'm using the following code:

if i[1] == "id_text":
    inst = driver.find_element_by_id(i[2])
    #inst.click()
    for option in inst.find_elements_by_tag_name('option'):
        if option.text == i[3]:
            option.click()

But it keeps constantly raising the error

raise exception_class(message, screen, stacktrace)
selenium.common.exceptions.NoSuchElementException: Message: u'Unable to locate element: {"method":"xpath","selector":"//select[@id=\'sex\']"}' ; Stacktrace:

I know the if statement is being executed, and that the value of the id is correct. To try to fix this i tried replacing id with name, no result. I then tried using find_element_by_id and find_element_by_name, still unable to find the element.

The element does exist and the page has loaded. I know this for certain because before the dropdown there exists another text field which is filled in properly, there is no ajax on the website either but i did try using waits. 60 sec waits didn't help either.

The dropdown i am trying to zero in on is

<select style="visibility: visible;" name="sex" id="sex" onchange="changefees()">
<option value="0">Select Gender</option>
<option value="1">Male</option><option value="2">Female</option>
</select>

The value of the id/name being supplied as well as the text is correct, i verified that by printing the values before executing the code. Any help is highly appreciated.

Edit: I also tried to use the same code on another dropdown on the page, same result.

Answer 1

It turns out i was able to find the problem by myself, it was not at all in the above snippet of code.

if i[1] == "id_text":
    inst = driver.find_element_by_id(i[2])
    #inst.click()
    for option in inst.find_elements_by_tag_name('option'):
        if option.text == i[3]:
            option.click()

This above code was inside of a function instructions(webdriver, i) however in the dropdown selector i used the variable 'driver' instead of 'webdriver'. This did not give a driver not found error as i was juggling multiple driver instances and there was a driver instance named driver but it was on another page, hence throwing the element not found error.

Answer 2

I tried a lot many things, but my drop down was inside a table and I was not able to perform a simple select operation. Only the below solution worked. Here I am highlighting drop down elem and pressing down arrow until getting the desired value -

        #identify the drop down element
        elem = browser.find_element_by_name(objectVal)
        for option in elem.find_elements_by_tag_name('option'):
            if option.text == value:
                break

            else:
                ARROW_DOWN = u'\ue015'
                elem.send_keys(ARROW_DOWN)