Blocking login overlay window when scraping web page using Selenium

Question

I am trying to scrape a long list of books in 10 web pages. When the loop clicks on next > button for the first time the website displays a login overlay so selenium can not find the target elements. I have tried all the possible solutions:

1. Use some chrome options.
2. Use try-except to click X button on the overlay. But it appears only one time (when clicking next > for the first time). The problem is that when I put this try-except block at the end of while True: loop, it became infinite as I use continue in except as I do not want to break the loop.
3. Add some popup blocker extensions to Chrome but they do not work when I run the code although I add the extension using options.add_argument('load-extension=' + ExtensionPath).

This is my code:

options = Options()
options.add_argument('start-maximized')
options.add_argument('disable-infobars')
options.add_argument('disable-avfoundation-overlays')
options.add_argument('disable-internal-flash')
options.add_argument('no-proxy-server')
options.add_argument("disable-notifications")
options.add_argument("disable-popup")
Extension = (r'C:\Users\DELL\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\User Data\Profile 1\Extensions\ifnkdbpmgkdbfklnbfidaackdenlmhgh\1.1.9_0')
options.add_argument('load-extension=' + Extension)
options.add_argument('--disable-overlay-scrollbar')

driver = webdriver.Chrome(options=options)
driver.get('https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/32339._50_?page=')
wait = WebDriverWait(driver, 2)

review_dict = {'title':[], 'author':[],'rating':[]}


html_soup = BeautifulSoup(driver.page_source, 'html.parser')
prod_containers = html_soup.find_all('table', class_ = 'tableList js-dataTooltip')


while True:
   
    table =  driver.find_element_by_xpath('//*[@id="all_votes"]/table')

    for product in table.find_elements_by_xpath(".//tr"):
        
        for td in product.find_elements_by_xpath('.//td[3]/a'):
            title = td.text
            review_dict['title'].append(title)

        for td in product.find_elements_by_xpath('.//td[3]/span[2]'):
            author = td.text
            review_dict['author'].append(author)

        for td in product.find_elements_by_xpath('.//td[3]/div[1]'):
            rating = td.text[0:4]
            review_dict['rating'].append(rating)
            
    try:
        close = wait.until(EC.element_to_be_clickable((By.XPATH, '/html/body/div[3]/div/div/div[1]/button')))
        close.click()
        
    except NoSuchElementException:
        continue
                
    try:
        element = wait.until(EC.element_to_be_clickable((By.CLASS_NAME, 'next_page')))
        element.click()
        
    except TimeoutException:    
        break
    
    
df = pd.DataFrame.from_dict(review_dict) 
df

Any help like if I can change the loop to for loop clicks next > button until the end rather than while loop or where should I put try-except block to close the overlay or if there is Chromeoption can disable overlay. Thanks in advance

Answer 1

Thank you for sharing your code and the website that you are having trouble with. I was able to close the Login Modal by using xpath. I took this challenge and broke up the code using class objects.

1 object is for the selenium.webdriver.chrome.webdriver and the other object is for the page that you wanted to scrape the data against ( https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/32339 ).

In the following methods, I used the Javascript return arguments[0].scrollIntoView(); method and was able to scroll to the last book that displayed on the page. After I did that, I was able to click the next button

def scroll_to_element(self, xpath : str):
        element = self.chrome_driver.find_element(By.XPATH, xpath)
        self.chrome_driver.execute_script("return arguments[0].scrollIntoView();", element)

def get_book_count(self):
        return self.chrome_driver.find_elements(By.XPATH, "//div[@id='all_votes']//table[contains(@class, 'tableList')]//tbody//tr").__len__()

def click_next_page(self):
        # Scroll to last record and click "next page"
        xpath = "//div[@id='all_votes']//table[contains(@class, 'tableList')]//tbody//tr[{0}]".format(self.get_book_count())
        self.scroll_to_element(xpath)
        self.chrome_driver.find_element(By.XPATH, "//div[@id='all_votes']//div[@class='pagination']//a[@class='next_page']").click()

Once I clicked on the "Next" button, I saw the modal display. I was able to find the xpath for the modal and was able to close the modal.

def is_displayed(self, xpath: str, int = 5):
        try:
            webElement = DriverWait(self.chrome_driver, int).until(
                DriverConditions.presence_of_element_located(locator = (By.XPATH, xpath))
            )
            
            return True if webElement != None else False
        except:
            return False

def is_modal_displayed(self):
        return self.is_displayed("//body[@class='modalOpened']")

def close_modal(self):
        self.chrome_driver.find_element(By.XPATH, "//div[@class='modal__content']//div[@class='modal__close']").click()
        if(self.is_modal_displayed()):
            raise Exception("Modal Failed To Close")

I hope this helps you to solve your problem.