selenium & weblinks help

[gr3yali3n]

i am playing around learning how selenium is supposed to work , i think that this is a really cool module.
but i am struggling with web elements a little bit. when it comes to links.. i do not under stand why when i copy the css path , the css selector or even the xpath what i paste into the idle isnt working.. i obviously have misunderstood something about element selectors (at least when it comes to links.), i can find the search bar of google , duckduckgo and bing but when i try the links to the web sites nada.., if some one could help out. this is the last thing i was messing with just a simple open webpage but i cant even get the link to work.
i guess i should also add that i am using firefox.

import pyautogui
from selenium import webdriver
import time

browser = webdriver.Firefox()
browser.get('https://www.duckduckgo.com')
search_bar = browser.find_element_by_css_selector('#search_form_input_homepage')
search_bar.click()
search_bar.send_keys('liveleak')
search_bar.submit()
LL = browser.find_element_by_css_selector("#r1-0 > div:nth-child(1) > div:nth-child(2) > div:nth-child(1) > a:nth-child(2) > span:nth-child(1)   ")   
LL.click()

time.sleep(5)
browser.close()

and i have also tried a try and except line..

from selenium import webdriver
import time

browser = webdriver.Firefox()
browser.get('https://www.duckduckgo.com')
search_bar = browser.find_element_by_css_selector('#search_form_input_homepage')
search_bar.click()
search_bar.send_keys('liveleak')
search_bar.submit()




try:
    LL = browser.find_element_by_css_selector("#r1-0 > div:nth-child(1) > div:nth-child(2) > div:nth-child(1) > a:nth-child(2)  ")
    LL.click()

except:
    ll = browser.find_element_by_css_selector("#r1-0 > div:nth-child(1) > div:nth-child(2) > div:nth-child(1) > a:nth-child(2) > span:nth-child(1)")
    ll.click()

finally:
    print('neither of those worked')

time.sleep(5)
browser.close()

[snippsat]

find_element_by_css_selector() return a list.
Don't need a .click() on search_bar.
Also add delay before trying to get content in link time.sleep a fast first way when testing,or look at Waits

browser.get('https://duckduckgo.com')
search_bar = browser.find_elements_by_css_selector('#search_form_input_homepage')[0]
#search_bar.click()
search_bar.send_keys('liveleak')
search_bar.submit()
time.sleep(3)
first_link = browser.find_elements_by_css_selector('#r1-0 > div:nth-child(1) > h2:nth-child(1) > a:nth-child(1)')
print(first_link[0].text)

Output:
LiveLeak.com - Redefining the Media

[gr3yali3n]

find_element_by_css_selector() return a list.
Don't need a .click() on search_bar.
Also add delay before trying to get content in link time.sleep a fast first way when testing,or look at Waits

browser.get('https://duckduckgo.com')
search_bar = browser.find_elements_by_css_selector('#search_form_input_homepage')[0]
#search_bar.click()
search_bar.send_keys('liveleak')
search_bar.submit()
time.sleep(3)
first_link = browser.find_elements_by_css_selector('#r1-0 > div:nth-child(1) > h2:nth-child(1) > a:nth-child(1)')
print(first_link[0].text)

Output:
LiveLeak.com - Redefining the Media

thank you , i was getting frustrated with this i kept going over and over the html link , i thought i was about to have to start taking html and css classes : ) just to figure this out.

[gr3yali3n]

also is there a easy way to locate and compare the elements like i've seen with firefox firepath/firebug?that looked like it would be less of a pain, i am pretty much guessing which is the correct element at this point. i mean i have a good idea but i have to run the program a few times until i get the right line in there..

[snippsat]

also is there a easy way to locate and compare the elements like i've seen with firefox firepath/firebug?

Both in Chrome and FireFox can copy CSS selector or XPath.
Right click inspect,the choose a tag and right click copy, Selector or XPath.
Sometime do i use ChroPath.

[gr3yali3n]

just learned that you can compare elements in the devtools console by typing $$("input") this will return all of the input tags so you need to refine this further, by adding brackets []
$$("input[id='ipt2']") and the id of the element you are wanting to compare.

there is away to do this with xpath also
$x("") but this gets even more complicated and honestly i am still trying to figure it all out , i just want to add this to my own dumb comment from earlier, i went out and found an answer. so if anyone faces this later on i hope this helps or gives some idea on which direction to head in.