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📚 Day 6: Interacting with Dynamic Elements

Instagram uses dynamic content that loads as you scroll through the page. To interact with these elements (like posts, comments, or followers), we need to handle:

✅ Infinite scrolling
✅ JavaScript execution with Selenium
✅ Locating elements that load dynamically

🧑‍🏫 Step 1: Handling Infinite Scrolling

Instagram pages like feeds and hashtag pages use infinite scrolling. This means new posts load dynamically when you scroll down. Here's how to handle it with Selenium:

🔧 Code Example: Infinite Scrolling on Instagram

from selenium import webdriver
from selenium.webdriver.common.by import By
from selenium.webdriver.chrome.service import Service
from selenium.webdriver.chrome.options import Options
import time

# Setup Chrome options
chrome_options = Options()
chrome_options.add_argument("--disable-notifications")
chrome_options.add_argument("--start-maximized")

# Initialize the driver
service = Service("path/to/chromedriver")
driver = webdriver.Chrome(service=service, options=chrome_options)

# Open Instagram
driver.get("https://www.instagram.com/")

# Wait for the page to load
time.sleep(5)

# Log in to Instagram (replace with your credentials)
username = driver.find_element(By.NAME, "username")
password = driver.find_element(By.NAME, "password")
username.send_keys("your_username")
password.send_keys("your_password")
login_button = driver.find_element(By.XPATH, "//button[@type='submit']")
login_button.click()

# Wait for login to complete
time.sleep(5)

# Infinite scrolling function
def infinite_scroll():
    last_height = driver.execute_script("return document.body.scrollHeight")
    
    while True:
        # Scroll down to the bottom
        driver.execute_script("window.scrollTo(0, document.body.scrollHeight);")
        time.sleep(2)  # Wait for new content to load
        
        # Calculate new scroll height and compare with last height
        new_height = driver.execute_script("return document.body.scrollHeight")
        if new_height == last_height:
            break  # Exit the loop when no more content is loaded
        last_height = new_height

# Call the infinite scroll function
infinite_scroll()

# Close the browser
driver.quit()

🧩 Understanding the Code

driver.execute_script(): Executes JavaScript code in the browser.
window.scrollTo(0, document.body.scrollHeight): Scrolls to the bottom of the page.
document.body.scrollHeight: Returns the total height of the web page.

🛠️ Practical Task

1. Logs into Instagram.
2. Navigates to a hashtag page.
3. Scrolls through the feed to load at least 20 posts.

🧑‍💻 Step 2: Interacting with Dynamically Loaded Elements

After scrolling, you can interact with the newly loaded elements. For example, liking posts or following users.

🔧 Code Example: Liking Posts on a Hashtag Page

# Navigate to a hashtag page
driver.get("https://www.instagram.com/explore/tags/python/")

# Wait for the page to load
time.sleep(5)

# Infinite scroll
infinite_scroll()

# Locate posts and like them
posts = driver.find_elements(By.XPATH, "//a[contains(@href, '/p/')]")

for post in posts[:5]:  # Like the first 5 posts
    driver.get(post.get_attribute("href"))
    time.sleep(2)

    try:
        like_button = driver.find_element(By.XPATH, "//span[@aria-label='Like']")
        like_button.click()
        time.sleep(2)
    except Exception as e:
        print("Already liked or couldn't find the like button.")

🎯 Your Goal for Day 6:

1. Scroll through Instagram feeds automatically.
2. Interact with dynamically loaded elements (like posts).

Would you like me to help you further with XPath, CSS Selectors, or optimizing your code? 😊

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