How to get the text from element in Selenium

Question

I am trying to fetch the text ($315.50) from:

<td id="balance" class="ng-binding">$315.50</td>

I am not succeeding though, I have tried:

@FindBy(how = How.CSS, using = "#balance")
private WebElement balance;

and

@FindBy(how = How.ID, using = "#balance")
private WebElement balance;

With these selectors I than do:

System.out.println("Balance" + balance)

as result I get

Balance[[ChromeDriver: chrome on WINDOWS (4ccbccdb5b54de0526e0ec68db88a48c)] -> css selector: #balance]

Or if try to do something else with it, I get errors saying that the methods receives an empty string.

For other elements in my test framework I can do manage to fetch the text from elements. The general setup does not seem to be the problem. Anyone an idea what I am doing wrong in this specific example?

Are you sure, according to https://stackoverflow.com/questions/32307702/what-is-the-difference-between-gettext-and-getattribute-in-selenium-webdrive one should use getText to find the value between ><. In my example, if I use getAttribute("class") I get "ng-binding" returned, not the dollar value. — Jealgu, Aug 03 '22 at 16:04

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Aug 03 '22 at 22:07

Considering the HTML:

<td id="balance" class="ng-binding">$315.50</td>

To identify the element you can use either of the following locator strategies:

Using id:

@FindBy(how = How.ID, using = "balance")
private WebElement balance;

Using cssSelector:

@FindBy(how = How.CSS, using = "td#balance")
private WebElement balance;

Using xpath:

@FindBy(how = How.XPATH, using = "//td[@id='balance']")
private WebElement balance;

To print the text:

Using getText():
```
System.out.println(balance.getText())
```

Using getAttribute("innerHTML"):

System.out.println(balance.getAttribute("innerHTML"))

Using getAttribute("innerText"):

System.out.println(balance.getAttribute("innerText"))

Using getAttribute("textContent"):

System.out.println(balance.getAttribute("textContent"))

How to get the text from element in Selenium

1 Answers1