Get HTML source of WebElement in Selenium WebDriver using Python

Question

I'm using the Python bindings to run Selenium WebDriver:

from selenium import webdriver
wd = webdriver.Firefox()

I know I can grab a webelement like so:

elem = wd.find_element_by_css_selector('#my-id')

And I know I can get the full page source with...

wd.page_source

But is there a way to get the "element source"?

elem.source   # <-- returns the HTML as a string

The Selenium WebDriver documentation for Python are basically non-existent and I don't see anything in the code that seems to enable that functionality.

What is the best way to access the HTML of an element (and its children)?

Answer 1

You can read the innerHTML attribute to get the source of the content of the element or outerHTML for the source with the current element.

Python:

element.get_attribute('innerHTML')

Java:

elem.getAttribute("innerHTML");

C#:

element.GetAttribute("innerHTML");

Ruby:

element.attribute("innerHTML")

JavaScript:

element.getAttribute('innerHTML');

PHP:

$element->getAttribute('innerHTML');

It was tested and worked with the ChromeDriver.

Answer 2

There is not really a straightforward way of getting the HTML source code of a webelement. You will have to use JavaScript. I am not too sure about python bindings, but you can easily do like this in Java. I am sure there must be something similar to JavascriptExecutor class in Python.

 WebElement element = driver.findElement(By.id("foo"));
 String contents = (String)((JavascriptExecutor)driver).executeScript("return arguments[0].innerHTML;", element);

Answer 3

Here's how to get the HTML source code using Selenium Python:

elem = driver.find_element("xpath", "//*")
source_code = elem.get_attribute("outerHTML")

Here's how to save that HTML to a file:

with open('c:/html_source_code.html', 'w') as f:
    f.write(source_code.encode('utf-8'))

Answer 4

In Ruby, using selenium-webdriver (2.32.1), there is a page_source method that contains the entire page source.

Answer 5

The other answers provide a lot of details about retrieving the markup of a WebElement. However, an important aspect is, modern websites are increasingly implementing JavaScript, ReactJS, jQuery, Ajax, Vue.js, Ember.js, GWT, etc. to render the dynamic elements within the DOM tree. Hence there is a necessity to wait for the element and its children to completely render before retrieving the markup.

---

Python

Hence, ideally you need to induce WebDriverWait for the visibility_of_element_located() and you can use either of the following Locator Strategies:

• Using get_attribute("outerHTML"):

  element = WebDriverWait(driver, 20).until(EC.visibility_of_element_located((By.CSS_SELECTOR, "#my-id")))
  print(element.get_attribute("outerHTML"))
  

• Using execute_script():

  element = WebDriverWait(driver, 20).until(EC.visibility_of_element_located((By.CSS_SELECTOR, "#my-id")))
  print(driver.execute_script("return arguments[0].outerHTML;", element))
  

• Note: You have to add the following imports:

  from selenium.webdriver.support.ui import WebDriverWait
  from selenium.webdriver.common.by import By
  from selenium.webdriver.support import expected_conditions as EC
  

Answer 6

Using the attribute method is, in fact, easier and more straightforward.

Using Ruby with the Selenium and PageObject gems, to get the class associated with a certain element, the line would be element.attribute(Class).

The same concept applies if you wanted to get other attributes tied to the element. For example, if I wanted the string of an element, element.attribute(String).

Answer 7

It looks outdated, but let it be here anyway. The correct way to do it in your case:

elem = wd.find_element_by_css_selector('#my-id')
html = wd.execute_script("return arguments[0].innerHTML;", elem)

or

html = elem.get_attribute('innerHTML')

Both are working for me (selenium-server-standalone-2.35.0).

Answer 8

Java with Selenium 2.53.0

driver.getPageSource();

Answer 9

InnerHTML will return the element inside the selected element and outerHTML will return the inside HTML along with the element you have selected

Example:

Now suppose your Element is as below

<tr id="myRow"><td>A</td><td>B</td></tr>

innerHTML element output

<td>A</td><td>B</td>

outerHTML element output

<tr id="myRow"><td>A</td><td>B</td></tr>

Live Example:

http://www.java2s.com/Tutorials/JavascriptDemo/f/find_out_the_difference_between_innerhtml_and_outerhtml_in_javascript_example.htm

Below you will find the syntax which require as per different binding. Change the innerHTML to outerHTML as per required.

Python:

element.get_attribute('innerHTML')

Java:

elem.getAttribute("innerHTML");

If you want whole page HTML, use the below code:

driver.getPageSource();

Answer 10

The method to get the rendered HTML I prefer is the following:

driver.get("http://www.google.com")
body_html = driver.find_element_by_xpath("/html/body")
print body_html.text

However, the above method removes all the tags (yes, the nested tags as well) and returns only text content. If you interested in getting the HTML markup as well, then use the method below.

print body_html.getAttribute("innerHTML")

Answer 11

This works seamlessly for me.

element.get_attribute('innerHTML')

Answer 12

I hope this could help: http://selenium.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/docs/api/java/org/openqa/selenium/WebElement.html

Here is described Java method:

java.lang.String    getText() 

But unfortunately it's not available in Python. So you can translate the method names to Python from Java and try another logic using present methods without getting the whole page source...

E.g.

 my_id = elem[0].get_attribute('my-id')

Answer 13

Updated 2022 Selenium Retrieving HTML

To start with, download the Python bindings for Selenium WebDriver.

• One can do this from the PyPI page for the Selenium package.
• Alternatively, one can use pip to install the Selenium package. Python 3.6 provides the pip in the standard library.

Method 1

Read the innerHTML attribute to get the source of the element’s content. innerHTML is a property of a DOM element whose value is the HTML between the opening tag and ending tag.

For example, the innerHTML property in the code below carries the value “text”

<p>
a text
</p>

element.get_attribute('innerHTML')

Method 2

Read the outerHTML to get the source with the current element. outerHTML is an element property whose value is the HTML between the opening and closing tags and the HTML of the selected element itself.

For example, the code’s outerHTML property carries a value that contains div and span inside that.

<div>
<span>Hello there!</span>
</div>

ele.get_atrribute("outerHTML")

Answer 14

If you are interested in a solution for Selenium Remote Control in Python, here is how to get innerHTML:

innerHTML = sel.get_eval("window.document.getElementById('prodid').innerHTML")

Answer 15

Use execute_script get html

bs4(BeautifulSoup) also can access html tag quickly.

from bs4 import BeautifulSoup
html = adriver.execute_script("return document.documentElement.outerHTML")
bs4_onepage_object=BeautifulSoup(html,"html.parser")
bs4_div_object=bs4_onepage_object.find_all("atag",class_="attribute")

Answer 16

In current versions of php-webdriver (1.12.0+) you have to use

$element->getDomProperty('innerHTML');

as pointed out in this issue: https://github.com/php-webdriver/php-webdriver/issues/929

Answer 17

In PHP Selenium WebDriver you can get page source like this:

$html = $driver->getPageSource();

Or get HTML of the element like this:

// innerHTML if you need HTML of the element content
$html = $element->getDomProperty('outerHTML');

Answer 18

WebElement element = driver.findElement(By.id("foo"));
String contents = (String)((JavascriptExecutor)driver).executeScript("return arguments[0].innerHTML;", element); 

This code really works to get JavaScript from source as well!

Answer 19

And in PHPUnit Selenium test it's like this:

$text = $this->byCssSelector('.some-class-nmae')->attribute('innerHTML');