1

I'm attempting to extract "479" from this sample HTML:

<div data-testid="testid">
  "479"
  " Miles Away"
</div>

I'm using the following Selenium code in Python:

xpath = 'html/body/div/text()[1]'
WebDriverWait(driver, 30).until(EC.visibility_of_element_located((By.XPATH, xpath)))
distance = driver.find_element(By.XPATH, xpath)
print(distance)

Which returns the following error:

'The result of the xpath expression "html/body/div/text()[1]" is: [object Text]. It should be an element.'

I've attempted to remove text()[1] from the end of my xpath, theoretically printing off all data contained the in the HTML div, but it will instead print a blank line when I do so.

Note: I'm an amateur and self-taught (via mostly Google, YouTube, and this site), so some of my wordage may not be correct. I apologize in advanced.

undetected Selenium
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Kouu_Tori
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4 Answers4

1

Given the html:

<div data-testid="testid">
  "479"
  " Miles Away"
</div>

Both the texts 479 and Miles Away are with in 2 different text nodes.

Selenium doesn't supports text() as it returns a text node, where as Selenium expects back a WebElement. Hence you see the error:

The result of the xpath expression "html/body/div/text()[1]" is: [object Text]. It should be an element.

Solution

To extract the text 479 you can use either of the following locator strategies:

  • Using xpath through execute_script() and textContent:

    print(driver.execute_script('return arguments[0].firstChild.textContent;', WebDriverWait(driver, 30).until(EC.visibility_of_element_located((By.XPATH, "//div[@data-testid='testid']")))).strip())

  • Using xpath through splitlines() and get_attribute():

    print(WebDriverWait(driver, 30).until(EC.visibility_of_element_located((By.XPATH, "//div[@data-testid='testid']"))).get_attribute("innerHTML").splitlines()[1])
undetected Selenium
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0

The problem is that you can't treat text like that, the text() function returns everything as a string including a line break. I think there is no split function that can help you with that, I advise you to get the text in a python variable and do a split('\n') to the text.

xpath = 'html/body/div/text()'
WebDriverWait(driver,30).until(EC.visibility_of_element_located((By.XPATH, xpath)))
distance = driver.find_element(By.XPATH, xpath)
print(distance.split('\n')[0])
Rimander
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0

You should take the entire element (without text()) using only

html/body/div

then from returned element get text, which will be: "479" " Miles Away" . Then using split method from python you can take that number(split by \n, space, or ").

adambogdan1993
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0

Selenium doesn't support the following xpath xpath = 'html/body/div/text()[1]'

To identify the element uniquely, Your xpath should be like

xpath = '//div[@data-testid="testid"]'
WebDriverWait(driver, 30).until(EC.visibility_of_element_located((By.XPATH, xpath)))
distance = driver.find_element(By.XPATH, xpath).text
print(distance)

To get the text of the element you have to use element.text

KunduK
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