How can I delete an element in Selenium using Python

Question

I've been trying to delete an element and I terribly failed at it. The element can only be reached via its class name and I have tried doing this:

js = "var aa=document.getElementsByClassName('classname')[0];aa.parentNode.removeChild(aa)"
driver.execute_script(js)

I get an error that the parent node is undefined.

So what is the best way to delete an element using Selenium?

Answer 1

You can directly delete the node using the following script, without having to refer to parent:

js_string = "var element = document.getElementById(\"element_id\");element.remove();"

browser.execute_script(js_string)

If you have the reference to the element, you can get the id using selenium : element.get_attribute(id)

Comments

@tonystark thanks for providinrg the solution. Even I have faced the same problem and tried using different solutions. But your answer worked well for me. Great approach!!

Answer 2

Hi friend,
getElementByClassName is not a method on document. You'll want to use

getElementsByClassName('classname')[0]...
but only if you are sure it's the only one with that class.

And you can also do this:

element = driver.find_element_by_class_name('classname')
driver.execute_script("string"
var element = arguments[0];
element.parentNode.removeChild(element);
"", element)

Or you can use a solution that relies on JavaScript to find the element:

driver.execute_script(" "
var element = document.querySelector(".classname");
if (element)
    element.parentNode.removeChild(element);
" ")

This solution is much better if you use a remote server to run the tests (like BrowserStack and so on) but there's a non-negligible cost for communication between the Selenium client and the server.

This worked for me. Check it out!

Comments

Her question is if the parent is not defined. This works if the parent is defined.