Python and how to get text from a Selenium element WebElement object

Question

I am trying to get the tag text content on an HTML page by using Selenium methods, but it seems method someElement.getText() is not available in Python. Is there a way?

Here's a traceback:

AttributeError: 'WebElement' object has no attribute 'getText'

very similar to http://stackoverflow.com/questions/12325454/how-to-get-text-of-an-element-in-selenium-webdriver-via-the-python-api-without — aberna, Jan 19 '15 at 10:45
I was pointing at the .text method cited inside the question — aberna, Jan 19 '15 at 10:58

score 89 · Accepted Answer · edited Dec 19 '20 at 19:20

89

Once you locate the element you can use the text property.

Example:

for element in self.driver.find_elements_by_tag_name('img'):
       print element.text
       print element.tag_name
       print element.parent
       print element.location
       print element.size

edited Dec 19 '20 at 19:20

Vladimir Mikulic

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answered Jan 19 '15 at 10:55

aberna

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16

Yes! Thank you. I found `element.get_attribute('text')` works too and it with more possibilities. – Alex Jan 19 '15 at 11:01
13

You need to be careful if the text is hidden, e.g. via CSS, on the page. In that case you need to do element.get_attribute("innerText"). See: http://yizeng.me/2014/04/08/get-text-from-hidden-elements-using-selenium-webdriver/ – Dave Potts Oct 11 '17 at 15:57
This reply even tough expanding on a different subject finally clarified the different objects returned by find_element and find_elements (with the plural s) : – Robert Alexander Jan 26 '22 at 16:27
The `.text` property (or any of the others) weirdly was not showing up in code completion. However, it did work perfectly when I used it! The same with @Alex's `get_attribute('text')`. Awesome info! – leanne Feb 23 '23 at 20:21

score 7 · Answer 2 · edited Nov 15 '22 at 23:46

7

Selenium get text from an element (just add ".text"):

For all elements of the list

 tree = browser.find_elements_by_xpath(<the_XPATH>)
 for i in tree:
     print(i.text)

[ ] fetchby number

 tree = browser.find_elements_by_xpath(<the_XPATH>)
 print(tree[0].text)

edited Nov 15 '22 at 23:46

Peter Mortensen

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answered Nov 22 '19 at 13:31

Somesh Samadder

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score 0 · Answer 3 · edited Nov 15 '22 at 23:48

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I was in a task to extract text between the target tags, but the x.text method didn't work for me. This is because some text are saved as invisible elements. For invisible elements, use:

list1 = [x.get_attribute("innertext") for x in driver.find_element_by_xpath(xpath)]
print(list1)

edited Nov 15 '22 at 23:48

Peter Mortensen

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answered May 13 '20 at 18:07

Aswin Babu

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score 0 · Answer 4 · edited Nov 15 '22 at 23:57

0

Actually with Python 3 this worked for me:

obj = browser.find_element_by_xpath("the_XPATH")
print(obj.text)

Is not necessary iterate the element because launch a Traceback:

TypeError: 'WebElement' object is not iterable

edited Nov 15 '22 at 23:57

Peter Mortensen

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answered Aug 29 '20 at 14:04

aKratos

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Python and how to get text from a Selenium element WebElement object

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