How can I select a html element no matter what frame it is in in selenium?

Answer #1:

No, it is not possible to interact with any WebElement within an iframe through Selenium without switching to the respective iframe.

Reason :

When a page is loaded, Selenium‘s focus by default remains on the Top Window. The Top Window contains the other iframes and the framesets. So when we need to interact with a WebElement which is within an iframe we have to switch to the respective iframe through one of the below-mentioned methods :

Frame Switching Methods :

We can switch over to frames by 3 ways.

By Frame Name :

Name attribute of iframe through which we can switch to it.

Example:

driver.switch_to.frame("iframe_name")

By Frame ID :

ID attribute of iframe through which we can switch to it.

Example:

driver.switch_to.frame("iframe_id")

By Frame Index :

Suppose if there are 10 frames in the page, we can switch to the iframe by using the index.

Example:

driver.switch_to.frame(0)
driver.switch_to.frame(1)

Switching back to the Main Frame :

We can switch back to the main frame by using default_content() or parent_frame()

Example:

driver.switch_to.default_content()
driver.switch_to.parent_frame()

A Better Approach to Switch Frames:

A better way to switch frames will be to induce WebDriverWait for the availability of the intended frame with expected_conditions set to frame_to_be_available_and_switch_to_it as follows :

• Through Frame ID :

  WebDriverWait(driver, 10).until(EC.frame_to_be_available_and_switch_to_it(By.ID,"id_of_iframe"))
  

• Through Frame Name :

  WebDriverWait(driver, 10).until(EC.frame_to_be_available_and_switch_to_it(By.NAME,"name_of_iframe"))
  

• Through Frame Xpath :

  WebDriverWait(driver, 10).until(EC.frame_to_be_available_and_switch_to_it(By.XPATH,"xpath_of_iframe"))
  

• Through Frame CSS :

  WebDriverWait(driver, 10).until(EC.frame_to_be_available_and_switch_to_it(By.CSS_SELECTOR,"css_of_iframe"))
  

Reference

You can find a relevant detailed discussion in:

• Ways to deal with #document under iframe

Answer #2:

Writing your own recursive finder should be easy enough. Apologies, don’t know python but in Java it would be something like:

public void findInAllFrames(WebElement e, String targetIdStr) {

    List<WebElement> l = e.findElements(By.tagName("iframe"));

    for(int inx=0; inx<l.size(); inx++) {
        List<WebElement> targets = l.get(inx).findElements(By.id(targetIdStr));
        if(targets.size()>0) {
            // Do something with your targets
        }

        findInAllFrames(l.get(inx), targetIdStr);
    }
}