Python - Selenium - cant webscrape specific text content from html

Question

i try to webscrape this part of a html:

<td class="zebraTable__td zebraTable__td--companyName"><a href="/unternehmen/8116602/schneider-electric-holding-germany-gmbh" data-gtm="companySearch__searchResult--76">
                        Schneider Electric Holding Germany GmbH
                    </a></td>

HTML Code

from this Site:

https://de.statista.com/companydb/suche?idCountry=276&idBranch=0&revenueFrom=-1000000000000000000&revenueTo=1000000000000000000&employeesFrom=0&employeesTo=100000000&sortMethod=revenueDesc&p=4

with this Code:

from selenium import webdriver
from selenium.webdriver.common.keys import Keys
from selenium.webdriver.common.by import By
from selenium.webdriver.support.ui import WebDriverWait
import pandas as pd
import time 

driver = webdriver.Chrome('/Users/rieder/Anaconda3/chromedriver_win32/chromedriver.exe')

driver.get('https://de.statista.com/companydb/suche?idCountry=276&idBranch=0&revenueFrom=-1000000000000000000&revenueTo=1000000000000000000&employeesFrom=500&employeesTo=100000000&sortMethod=revenueDesc&p=1')

driver.find_element_by_id("cookiesNotificationConfirm").click();

company_name = driver.find_element_by_class_name('zebraTable__td zebraTable__td--companyName')

print(company_name)

I tried it for 4 hours and cant get it. I tried it with different methods like xpath, link text etc. but all i got is a empty company Name like this "[ ]".

Does someone know how selenium can find this exact piece of text "Liebherr-Hausgeräte Ochsenhausen GmbH"?

Thanks a lot.

Answer 1

What you are looking for can be found in the source code of the page under

<div data-company-search><div data-var-name="companyResults" data and it is part of the page source. So you do not need selenium in order to get it. just read the page with requests and find the data using Beautiful Soup .

Answer 2

To print the text Schneider Electric Holding Germany GmbH you have to induce WebDriverWait for the visibility_of_element_located() and you can use either of the following Locator Strategies:

• Using CSS_SELECTOR and text attribute:

  driver.get('https://de.statista.com/companydb/suche?idCountry=276&idBranch=0&revenueFrom=-1000000000000000000&revenueTo=1000000000000000000&employeesFrom=0&employeesTo=100000000&sortMethod=revenueDesc&p=4')
  WebDriverWait(driver, 20).until(EC.element_to_be_clickable((By.CSS_SELECTOR, "button#cookiesNotificationConfirm"))).click()
  print(WebDriverWait(driver, 20).until(EC.visibility_of_element_located((By.CSS_SELECTOR, "table.zebraTable.zebraTable--companies tr:nth-child(2)>td.zebraTable__td.zebraTable__td--companyName>a"))).text)
  

• Using XPATH and get_attribute("innerHTML"):

  driver.get('https://de.statista.com/companydb/suche?idCountry=276&idBranch=0&revenueFrom=-1000000000000000000&revenueTo=1000000000000000000&employeesFrom=0&employeesTo=100000000&sortMethod=revenueDesc&p=4')
  WebDriverWait(driver, 20).until(EC.element_to_be_clickable((By.XPATH, "//button[@id='cookiesNotificationConfirm']"))).click()
  print(WebDriverWait(driver, 20).until(EC.visibility_of_element_located((By.XPATH, "//table[@class='zebraTable zebraTable--companies']//following::tr[2]/td[@class='zebraTable__td zebraTable__td--companyName']/a"))).get_attribute("innerHTML"))
  

• Console Output:

  Schneider Electric Holding Germany GmbH
  

• 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
  

You can find a relevant discussion in How to retrieve the text of a WebElement using Selenium - Python

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Outro

Link to useful documentation:

• get_attribute() method Gets the given attribute or property of the element.
• text attribute returns The text of the element.
• Difference between text and innerHTML using Selenium