Python Selenium search for sibbling [object Text] that only have a text

Question

I want to get the text of an expression in xpath that only has text in its sibling html_code

I'm trying this way but it gives me an error and I don't know how to select the text, since it doesn't have any tag


driver.find_element('xpath','//li[@class="icon-feature"]//i[@class="icon-stotal"]//following-sibling::text()').text

Error:

InvalidSelectorException: invalid selector: The result of the xpath expression "//li[@class="icon-feature"]//i[@class="icon-stotal"]//following-sibling::text()" is: [object Text]. It should be an element.

I want to have only " 121 m2 Total" with this.

Any help on this is appreciated.

undetected Selenium · Answer 1 · 2023-01-24T07:16:15.753

find_element() returns a WebElement and it can't return a Text Node. So you can't use:

//xpath_expression/text()

Hence the error:

InvalidSelectorException: invalid selector

Solution

The text 121 m2 Total is within a text node and a decesdent of <i class="icon-stotal">. So to extract the text you need to induce WebDriverWait for the visibility_of_element_located() and you can use either of the following locator strategies:

Using XPATH and text attribute:

print(WebDriverWait(driver, 20).until(EC.visibility_of_element_located((By.XPATH, "//li[@class='icon-feature']/i[@class='icon-stotal']"))).text)

Using XPATH and get_attribute("textContent"):

print(WebDriverWait(driver, 20).until(EC.visibility_of_element_located((By.XPATH, "//li[@class='icon-feature']/i[@class='icon-stotal']"))).get_attribute("textContent"))

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

So, how can I convert it from Text Node to WebElement?, i tried to put something like this: '//li[@class="icon-feature"]//i[@class="icon-stotal"]//following-sibling::*' but it does not work — Freddy André Cuellar López, Jan 24 '23 at 07:23
Did you happen to check the [answer](https://stackoverflow.com/a/75218375/7429447) published against your [question](https://stackoverflow.com/q/75218136/7429447)? — undetected Selenium, Jan 24 '23 at 07:25
This is the problem, **121 m2** Total is not the decesdent of — Freddy André Cuellar López, Jan 24 '23 at 08:33

score 0 · Accepted Answer · answered Jan 24 '23 at 09:38

find_element must return a webelement, and you cannot convert a text node into a webelement.

In general to get text not wrapped in any tags, you must get the text of the parent and remove from it the text of the children. In this case there is only one child so

child  = driver.find_element(By.XPATH, "//i[@class='icon-stotal']")
parent = driver.find_element(By.XPATH, "//i[@class='icon-stotal']/parent::li")

Then

>>> parent.text.replace(child.text,'')
' 121 m total'

Python Selenium search for sibbling [object Text] that only have a text

2 Answers2

Solution