How to retrieve the text from an input element?

Question

I am use python and selenium to go to a website that generates a random email. I am trying to store that email in a variable and return it.

def getemail(self):

    driver = self.driver
    driver.get("https://temp-mail.org/en/")
    time.sleep(2)
    ne = driver.find_element_by_xpath("//*[@id='mail']").text
    return ne

Welcome to Stack Overflow! This is the kind of Selenium issue that comes up a lot, but isn't really a good SO question; it's likely that your locator is not correctly written. Please follow [this guide](https://openwritings.net/pg/python/python-selenium-debugging) on debugging issues where you can't find an element in Selenium. — Niayesh Isky, Aug 25 '19 at 23:18
Are you sure that driver.get("https://temp-mail.org/en/") is working? Try to print "driver" variable first. So, you can know that problem is here or in next lines :) — Scott, Aug 25 '19 at 23:49
Possible duplicate of [Selenium Webdriver Python How to get text from the input tag](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/32630986/selenium-webdriver-python-how-to-get-text-from-the-input-tag) — JeffC, Aug 25 '19 at 23:54

furas · Accepted Answer · 2019-08-26T00:02:35.980

1

It is <input> and email is in its attribute value="", not as text between opening and closing tag.

ne = driver.find_element_by_xpath("//*[@id='mail']").get_attribute("value")

EDIT: as suggested @JeffC in comment it could use find_element_by_id

ne = driver.find_element_by_id("mail").get_attribute("value")

edited Aug 26 '19 at 00:02

answered Aug 25 '19 at 23:49

furas

134,197
12
106
148

1

If you are going to search for an element by nothing but an ID, please please please use `*_by_id()`. There's no reason not to. I know OP posted that but we should suggest best practices when we can improve their code, even if it's not what was specifically asked. – JeffC Aug 25 '19 at 23:52
1

@JeffC you are right. Frankly, I didn't even look at xpath. I only checked if there is no `_elements_` with `"s"` at the end :) – furas Aug 26 '19 at 00:00

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Aug 26 '19 at 09:07

@furas answer was pretty close. However to extract the random email address you have to induce WebDriverWait for the visibility_of_element_located() and you can use either of the following Locator Strategies:

Using CSS_SELECTOR:

print(WebDriverWait(driver, 20).until(EC.visibility_of_element_located((By.CSS_SELECTOR, "input#mail"))).get_attribute("value"))

Using XPATH:

print(WebDriverWait(driver, 20).until(EC.visibility_of_element_located((By.XPATH, "//input[@id='mail']"))).get_attribute("value"))

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

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Aug 26 '19 at 11:14

0

Just get this by get_attribute.

Change the second last line of your code to this:

ne = driver.find_element_by_id("mail").get_attribute("value")

answered Aug 26 '19 at 11:14

Asif Mohaimen

31
2

How to retrieve the text from an input element?

3 Answers3