How to use Selenium to scroll through a table on a non-scrolling page?

Other Questions Airtable
1

I’m facing an issue with a specific webpage where I need to scrape data from a table, but the page doesn’t allow for typical scrolling. I have already tried using JavaScript in the console to scroll through the table, but to no avail.

Here’s the context: I’m trying to access the data on a table located in a non-scrollable interface. I understand that there are related discussions on this topic, but those solutions haven’t worked for me.

This is my current implementation in Python:

import requests
from bs4 import BeautifulSoup
from selenium import webdriver
import time
from selenium.webdriver.common.by import By
from selenium.webdriver import ActionChains
from selenium.webdriver.common.keys import Keys

def fetch_table_data(url):
    driver = webdriver.Chrome()
    driver.get(url)
    time.sleep(15)  # Wait for page to load
    
    data_element = driver.find_element(By.XPATH, '//*[@id="table"]').send_keys(Keys.PAGE_DOWN)
    ActionChains(driver).move_to_element(data_element).perform()

if __name__ == '__main__':
    fetch_table_data('https://airtable.com/appImi8PX0i84XFwj/shr1PWZhR25O6DJxK/tblJG95RoC1WrRppF/viwVAi9l6dxxBtihM')

I’ve made several attempts to interact with the table but haven’t found a successful method so far. Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

2

Your approach has a fundamental issue - you can’t send keys to a table element and then move to it. The send_keys() method returns None, so there’s no element reference to work with.

I’ve scraped Airtable before and these embedded tables usually have their own scroll containers you need to target directly.

Try this instead:

def fetch_table_data(url):
    driver = webdriver.Chrome()
    driver.get(url)
    time.sleep(15)
    
    # Find the actual scrollable container
    scroll_container = driver.find_element(By.CSS_SELECTOR, '[data-testid="table-viewport"]')
    
    # Scroll within the container
    driver.execute_script("arguments[0].scrollTop += 500;", scroll_container)
    time.sleep(2)
    
    # For lazy loading tables, scroll incrementally
    for i in range(10):
        driver.execute_script("arguments[0].scrollTop += 300;", scroll_container)
        time.sleep(1)

Airtable views use virtualization, so you might need slow scrolling to trigger row loading. Also check if there are pagination controls or “Load More” buttons instead of scrolling.

This video covers Selenium automation basics that might help:

If that container selector doesn’t work, inspect the page elements to find the right scrollable div around your table.

3

You can’t use send_keys() on a table element - tables don’t accept keyboard input. You’re calling it on the wrong element instead of scrolling the actual container.

For tables on non-scrolling pages, find the scrollable container that holds the table. Look for the parent div with overflow properties, then use driver.execute_script() to scroll that specific element:

table_container = driver.find_element(By.XPATH, '//div[contains(@class, "table-container")]')
driver.execute_script("arguments[0].scrollTop = arguments[0].scrollHeight;", table_container)

If the table loads content dynamically, you’ll need to trigger pagination or infinite scroll by clicking load more buttons or scrolling to specific rows instead of using generic page scrolling.