How can I get the inner text of an element in Selenium?

Question

I'm working with a DOM node:

<input
    type="form-control"
    type="text"
    data-bind="textInput: EnterpriseId"
    disabled 
    autocomplete="off">

How can I get its value? I'm struggling since element.getText() does not work and returns a blank.

Possible duplicate: *[How to gettext() of an element in Selenium Webdriver](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/22087952/how-to-gettext-of-an-element-in-selenium-webdriver)* — Peter Mortensen, Nov 22 '20 at 07:49
[Reference for the `disabled` attribute](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Element/input#attr-autocomplete). But what is `data-bind`? What is the consequence for the doubled `type` attribute? — Peter Mortensen, Nov 17 '22 at 23:11

score 21 · Answer 1 · edited Nov 17 '22 at 23:06

21

Try this:

WebElement element = driver.findElement(By.id("id value"));  
String val = element.getAttribute("innerText")

edited Nov 17 '22 at 23:06

Peter Mortensen

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answered May 12 '17 at 09:29

Eknath

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can you share your By locator ? and code that you tried – Eknath May 12 '17 at 09:39
2

dude, u r deviating from the topic, why do u need the By locator here. I am just asking how to get an input type="text" value when the value attribute is not present for this element in the DOM – Bishwaroop Chakraborty May 12 '17 at 09:42
might be your locator and the way u wrote ur code snippet have some error. – Eknath May 12 '17 at 09:53
2

I'm getting: `AttributeError: 'WebElement' object has no attribute 'getAttribute'` but this is in python – etayluz Dec 15 '18 at 08:38
that's because you're using webdriver's java API instead of python's API – gabriel garcia Jun 21 '20 at 12:49

score 2 · Answer 2 · edited Nov 17 '22 at 23:48

2

I presume the element in question is an <input> element, so you may be able to use the element.getAttribute(String attribute) method like so:

String value = element.getAttribute("value");

edited Nov 17 '22 at 23:48

Peter Mortensen

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answered May 12 '17 at 09:13

Tom Trumper

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there is no value attribute as I can see in this element tag – Bishwaroop Chakraborty May 12 '17 at 09:14
Ok for the given element ``, what exactly are you trying to get hold of? Can you share a screenshot of the element? – Tom Trumper May 12 '17 at 09:17
i cannot get screenshots, this in an input text field which contains a value inside but the DOM does not display the value here. So i am not able to get the input field's text – Bishwaroop Chakraborty May 12 '17 at 09:34

score 1 · Answer 3 · edited Nov 17 '22 at 23:07

1

This input tag is disabled, hence element.getText() returns a blank value.

Use element.getAttribute("textContent") instead.

edited Nov 17 '22 at 23:07

Peter Mortensen

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answered May 12 '17 at 17:32

Harsh

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score 1 · Answer 4 · edited Nov 17 '22 at 23:16

1

You may be looking for the placeholder of an input text, because you might try:

element.getAttribute("placeholder");

edited Nov 17 '22 at 23:16

Peter Mortensen

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answered Oct 25 '17 at 21:02

Andrés Felipe Parra Arteaga

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score 1 · Answer 5 · edited Nov 17 '22 at 23:35

1

You can go to your browser → open developer tools → inspect element you want to take attribute from → click Properties → check if that value is in InnerText.

Then do as it is mentioned in previous comments:

element_locator.get_attribute('InnerText')

edited Nov 17 '22 at 23:35

Peter Mortensen

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answered Aug 28 '18 at 19:25

Stipe

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In Firefox (at least 106.0.2), it is "Inspector" (invoke it by menu *Tools* → *Browser Tools* → *Web Developer Tools*. Or if the *"Tools"* menu is hidden: `Alt` + `T`. Or keyboard shortcut `Ctrl` + `Shift` + `I` to open Web Developer Tools): 1) Click *"Pick an element from the page"* (or `Shift` + `Ctrl` + `C`). 2) Left click on an element on the page. 3) Right-click on the selected HTML line. 4) Choose *Copy* → *XPath*. – Peter Mortensen Nov 24 '22 at 00:23

score 0 · Answer 6 · edited Nov 17 '22 at 23:36

0

I had the exact same issue! This post solved it for me: How can I get the current contents of an element in webdriver

I used:

element = driver.find_elements_by_xpath(
            '//button[@class="size-grid-dropdown size-grid-button"]')
element.text

edited Nov 17 '22 at 23:36

Peter Mortensen

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answered Oct 31 '19 at 00:23

geppy

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why are you posting a python answer to an obviously *java* question? Even if you say it's not clear at all the rest of the answers are written for java... – gabriel garcia Jun 21 '20 at 12:47

score 0 · Answer 7 · edited Nov 17 '22 at 23:50

It works definitely, as I've tested it several times:

<input type="form-control" type="text" data-bind="textInput: EnterpriseId" disabled autocomplete="off">

In your example, you don’t have any innerText. So you can only get attributes as mentioned before with the existing attributes. In your case: type, data-bind, EnterpriseId and autocomplete. No value will be as this attribute isn’t created.

If you want to get only existing, this should be fine:

String example = driver.findElement(ByLocator(("")).getAttribute("any attribute of your input");
System.out.println(example);

score 0 · Answer 8 · edited Nov 17 '22 at 23:43

As other's suggested, HTML's input nodes don't have a text attribute because they can store data in multiple formats in a value attribute.

This can be easily seen in the HTML input API specification where this form control can be of type radio, date, file upload and many more.

So, in your specific case, I'd suggest you check the webdriver's API for a method that's able to retrieve the value attribute.

score 0 · Answer 9 · edited Nov 17 '22 at 23:45

0

As a bonus to evaluate innerText of an element within Selenium:

wait.until(ExpectedConditions.visibilityOfElementLocated(By.id("yourEl")));
wait.until(ExpectedConditions.attributeToBe(By.id("yourEl"), "innerText", yourValue));

Documentation: attributeToBe

edited Nov 17 '22 at 23:45

Peter Mortensen

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answered Jul 12 '22 at 02:53

Dave Yu

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merita · Answer 10 · 2023-03-13T06:52:46.577

Faced a similar issue, I wanted web driver to wait until a particular text appeared in 2 web elements.so did a do while until the condition passed.

String val = "", val1 = "";
        do {
            val = (commonMethods.getElementByXpath(chromedriver, 1000, elements.trasmitBandwidthText))
                    **.getAttribute("innerText");**

            val1 = (commonMethods.getElementByXpath(chromedriver, 1000, elements.receiveBandwidthText))
                    **.getAttribute("innerText");**

            System.out.println(pod + "--- " + val + " value !!!!!!" + val1);
        } while (!(val.contains(pod) && val1.contains(pod)));

.getAttribute("innerText") helps get text inside an element.

How can I get the inner text of an element in Selenium?

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