Use Join Method to Combine Text of FirefoxWebElements

Question

I'm new to Python, so I was hoping somebody could help me out with the following issue.

project_tags = browser.find_elements_by_xpath('//a[contains(@class, "campaignTags-tag")]')
separator = ', '
project_tags = separator.join(project_tags)

I know that if project_tags were an array, the join method would work. Hence I thought there may've been a chance the code above would've worked since project_tags is an iterable, but of course it didn't since it's an iterable of FirefoxWebElements.

I believe all I need to do in order to get join to work in this context is to point to the text of each FirefoxWebElement. Even though I can accomplish the aim in a couple other ways, I was just curious if this is possible?

One of those ways, which seems kind of verbose, is:

project_tags = browser.find_elements_by_xpath('//a[contains(@class, "campaignTags-tag")]')
for idx, tag in enumerate(project_tags):
    if idx is 0:
        tags_string = tag.text
    else:
        tags_string = tags_string + ', ' + tag.text if idx < len(project_tags) else tags_string + tag.text

Are there any methods I might not know about that would allow me to refactor and minimize the working example above?

I wouldn't say it was verbose; I would say it is not valid Python. — Scott Hunter, Jul 19 '18 at 02:55
@ScottHunter not valid, why?? (i've edited my answer btw and fixed the syntax error) — oldboy, Jul 19 '18 at 03:00
@ScottHunter thought you may have been referring to something else........... is that all you came here to say? lol — oldboy, Jul 19 '18 at 03:13
You can try using the following link https://stackoverflow.com/questions/32759318/how-to-escape-single-quote-in-xpath-1-0-in-selenium-for-python — Sunil Kumar, Jul 19 '18 at 06:12

score 0 · Accepted Answer · answered Jul 19 '18 at 13:28

0

I believe this does what you want:

tags_string = ", ".join([t.text for t in project_tags])

Note, however, that it includes a comma between the last 2 tags, which your code does not, which I believe is a bug. If not, you could use:

tags_string = ", ".join([t.text for t in project_tags[:-1]]) + project_tags[-1].text

answered Jul 19 '18 at 13:28

Scott Hunter

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i realized it was a bug, but i'm so confused why `idx + 1 < len(project_tags)` doesn't work properly? for instance, if you had a list of 3 items, the first iteration triggers the first clause of the if statement since `idx` is `0`; for the second iteration, because `idx + 1` is `2` and `len(list)` is `3`, the first half of the "ternary" operator should be triggered, but instead it resolves to the `else` of the "ternary" operator??? why – oldboy Jul 19 '18 at 18:38
For the last iteration, `idx` = `len(project_tags)-1`, which means `idx+1` = `len(project_tags)`, and thus `idx+1 < len(project_tags)` is false. – Scott Hunter Jul 19 '18 at 20:15
precisely... that's what i would expect to happen, but for some reason `idx+1 < len(project_tags)` was resolving to false for the last 2 iterations, so that you would end up with output like this: `rock, hip-hoprap` or `oranges, bananasapples` – oldboy Jul 20 '18 at 01:48
That is the output you get if the expression is false in only the last iteration, which is in fact what was happening. – Scott Hunter Jul 20 '18 at 02:07
huh? there's no comma between `bananas` and `oranges` or `hip-hop` and `rap` because `idx+1 < len(project_tags)` is necessarily resolving to false for the last two inputs of each concatenation process. that's what's confusing me: why does it resolve to false for the last two inputs instead of just the very last input? – oldboy Jul 20 '18 at 03:32

Use Join Method to Combine Text of FirefoxWebElements

1 Answers1