In Selenium Webdriver, how can I get a text after an element?

Question

I would like to get a text that exactly comes after a specific element. Please look at the sample code:

<div id="content-tab-submitter" class="">
    <h4>Sender</h4>
    <p>
        <span class="screenHidden">Name: </span>
        submitter
        <br>

        <span class="screenHidden">E-mail address:</span>
        submitter@asd.com
        <br>

        <span class="screenHidden">Account: </span>
        asdas
        <br>
    </p>
</div>

I would like to get the text that comes exactly after <span> which contains "Account". By using this XPath expression:

//*[@id='content-tab-submitter']/p/span[contains(text(),'Account')]/following::text()

Java gives me an error, since the output is not a web element and it is a text. So, it is not possible to use findElement.

How can I get this text in a clean way? I mean I do not want to get all texts (in this case): submitter\nsubmitter@asd.com\nasdas and then extract the desired text.

Answer 1

I think there isn't any straight possible way to extract text just after Account: i.e., an XPath expression which refers to text = 'asdas' directly.

So instead of trying to read exactly text = 'asdas' directly, try to read every text in the p tag and perform an operation like below to extract the tag.

WebDriver driver = new FirefoxDriver();
driver.get("file:///C:/Users/rajnish/Desktop/myText.html");

// XPath expression for talking complete text i.e all text inside every span tag that comes under p tag
String MyCompleteText  = driver.findElement(By.xpath("//*[@id='content-tab-submitter']/p")).getText();

System.out.println("My Complete Text is: " + MyCompleteText);

// MyCompleteText outputs in console:
// My Complete Text is: Name: submitter
// E-mail address: submitter@asd.com
// Account: asdas

// Now we have to split our MyCompleteText on the basis of Account:
// as we want text after Account: so do it like below

String[] mytext = MyCompleteText.split("Account:");
System.out.println("I am text after  Account: "+ mytext[1]);

And the output will be like this:

My Complete Text is: Name: submitter
E-mail address: submitter@asd.com
Account: asdas
I am text after  Account:  asdas

Answer 2

You can use a piece of JavaScript code to get the following text node:

// Get the targeted element
WebElement element = driver.findElement(By.cssSelector("id('content-tab-submitter')/p/span[contains(.,'Account')]"));

// Get the following text
String text = (String)((JavascriptExecutor)driver).executeScript(
    "return arguments[0].nextSibling.textContent.trim()", element);

Answer 3

To get the text, e.g., asdas, that comes exactly after <span> with innerText as Account, you can use the following lines of code:

// Identify the parent node
WebElement myElement = driver.findElement(By.xpath("//div[@id='content-tab-submitter']//p"));

String myText = ((JavascriptExecutor)driver).executeScript('return arguments[0].childNodes[8].textContent;', myElement).strip()
// or
String myText = ((JavascriptExecutor)driver).executeScript('return arguments[0].childNodes[10].textContent;', myElement).strip()

Answer 4

I hope this works perfectly fine. If not, then please add a div class in front of the span class.

//span[@class='screenHidden'][contains(., 'submitter')][contains(., 'submitter@asd.com')][contains(., 'asdas')]

Answer 5

You can use the getText() method of Selenium, something like:

driver.findElement(By.xpath("XPath expression of the element")).getText();

Your XPath expression can be:

//span[contains(.,'Account')]/following::text()