Web Scraping Element Selection Issue - Need Help with Selector Syntax

Other Questions Puppeteer
1

I’m trying to automate web navigation and having trouble with element selection. My goal is to click on a specific link in a table structure, but my current selector approach isn’t working properly.

Here’s what I have so far:

const webDriver = require('puppeteer');
const targetUrl = process.argv[2];

if (!targetUrl) {
    throw "URL parameter is required";
}

async function automateNavigation() {
    const browserInstance = await webDriver.launch({
        headless: false,
        defaultViewport: null,
        slowMo: 15,
        args: ['--start-maximized', '--disable-notifications']
    });
    
    const currentPage = await browserInstance.newPage();
    await currentPage.goto(targetUrl);

    await currentPage.waitForSelector(".main-nav .menu-container .nav-item a", {
        visible: true
    });
    await currentPage.click(".main-nav .menu-container .nav-item a");

    await currentPage.waitForSelector(".header-section .button-group", {
        visible: true
    });
    const linkElements = await currentPage.$$('.header-section .button-group a');
    await linkElements[0].click();

    await currentPage.waitForSelector(".data-table", {
        visible: true
    });
    
    // This line is causing problems
    const tableElement = await currentPage.$$('.data-table')[0].$$('tbody')[0].$$('tr')[0].$$('td')[0].$$('span')[1];
    await tableElement.click();

    await currentPage.pdf({path: 'output.pdf', format: "A4"});
    
    console.log("Process completed");
    browserInstance.close();
}
automateNavigation();

The problematic line const tableElement = await currentPage.$$('.data-table')[0].$$('tbody')[0].$$('tr')[0].$$('td')[0].$$('span')[1]; keeps throwing errors. What’s the correct way to navigate through nested table elements and select the right clickable element?

2

that chaining syntax wont work like that in puppeteer. you need to use evaluate() or a proper css selector. try await currentPage.click('.data-table tbody tr:first-child td:first-child span:nth-child(2)') instead of all that $$ chaining mess. much cleaner and actually works

3

The issue is that you’re mixing array indexing with element handle methods incorrectly. When you use $$() it returns an array of element handles, but you can’t chain $$() directly on array elements like that. Instead, you should either use a single CSS selector as suggested above, or if you need the element handle approach, do it properly with await currentPage.$('.data-table tbody tr td span:nth-of-type(2)') for a single element or handle the array elements separately. Another approach is to use currentPage.$eval() or currentPage.evaluate() if you need to perform operations within the page context. The chaining you attempted would require getting each element handle individually and then querying within each one, which makes the code unnecessarily complex compared to using a proper CSS selector.

4

You’re running into this issue because $$() returns a Promise that resolves to an array of ElementHandles, and you can’t directly chain methods on array elements like that. I’ve encountered this exact problem when I started with Puppeteer automation. The syntax you’re using tries to call methods on array indices rather than the actual ElementHandle objects. Instead of that complex chaining, use waitForSelector with a specific CSS path first, then either click directly with the selector or get the element handle properly. Something like await currentPage.waitForSelector('.data-table tbody tr td span:nth-child(2)'); await currentPage.click('.data-table tbody tr td span:nth-child(2)'); works much more reliably. If you absolutely need the element handle for some reason, use await currentPage.$('.data-table tbody tr td span:nth-child(2)') instead of the array chaining approach.