python - Why use find_element(By...) instead of find_element_by_

Question

What's the purpose and upside of using By from selenium.webdriver.common.by instead of instead of the normal find_element_by_... methods? For example:

driver.find_element_by_id('some_ID')

vs:

from selenium.webdriver.common.by import By
driver.find_element(By.ID, 'some_ID')

Answer 1

According to documentation find_element() seem to be kind of "private" method that is used by find_element_by_...() methods and also might be used in Page Object

So using Page Object pattern is the reason why you might need find_element() + By instead of find_element_by_...().

For example, you have some variable that contains elements' id value

link_id = "some_id"

and you use it to locate element as

my_link = driver.find_element_by_id(link_id)

If for some reason id attribute was removed from element, you need both to update selector and replace find_element_by_...() method in my_link as

link_class_name = "some_class_name"
my_link = driver.find_element_by_class_name(link_class_name)

If you use By, then your initial locator might be

link_locator = (By.ID, "some_id")

and you locate your element as

my_link = find_element(*link_locator)

In case of changes in HTML source you need just to update your link_locator as

link_locator = (By.CLASS_NAME, "some_class_name")

and my_link remains exactly the same