Checking if an element exists with Python Selenium

For a):

from selenium.common.exceptions import NoSuchElementException
def check_exists_by_xpath(xpath):
    try:
        webdriver.find_element_by_xpath(xpath)
    except NoSuchElementException:
        return False
    return True

For b): Moreover, you can take the XPath expression as a standard throughout all your scripts and create functions as above mentions for universal use.

I recommend to use CSS selectors. I recommend not to mix/use “by id”, “by name”, etc. and use one single approach instead.