" Selenium Compound class names not permitted "

Question

I have the below code that clicks on an element to pop up a screen and copy the text in it

el1 = driver.find_element_by_id("keyDev-A")
el1.click()
el2 = driver.find_element_by_class_name("content")
print(el2.text)

However, when I tried to get selenium to click on the button within that popup with

el3 = driver.find_element(By.CLASS_NAME, "action-btn cancel alert-display")
el3.click()

It produces an error message: invalid selector: Compound class names not permitted

This is the HTML that I am trying to get selenium to click on. The Close button.


    Confirm
    Cancel
    Close

How should I be writing el3 in order to click on the close button?

Lucas Tucker · Accepted Answer

Compound class names not permitted

What you may do instead is attempt using CSS selectors.

In your case, the following line of code should help you get the element you want :

    el3 = driver.find_element_by_css_selector(".action-btn.cancel.alert-display")

It finds the element with all three classes (action-btn, cancel and alert-display) in the class attribute.

Do note that the order of the classes doesn't matter here and any of the classes might appear anywhere within the class attribute.

As long as the element has all 3 classes, it'll be selected.

If you want the order of the classes to be fixed, you can use the following Xpath:

el3 = driver.find_element_by_xpath("//*[@class='action-btn cancel alert-display']")

About this question