Selenium WebDriver getText

Question

I have a <div name="myDiv">0</div>.

I try to write a test that myDiv has 0 text in it. With WebDriver it is:

String text = webDriver.findElement(By.xpath("//div[@name='myDiv']")).getText();

But in the result I have an empty string. Shouldn't I use getText() for getting a content of a div?

Related: *[How to gettext() of an element in Selenium Webdriver](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/22087952)* — Peter Mortensen, Nov 22 '20 at 08:06

score 2 · Answer 1 · answered Jul 26 '12 at 04:49

I had the same problem; a little digging brought me to this:

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/webdriver/fRb_1QOr3wg/wzUsW3Ll6bgJ

HTMLUnitDriver (and apparently FirefoxDriver) will return empty strings when you try to call WebElement#getText() on elements whose CSS property 'display' is set to 'none'.

Here is my solution:

public void assertContainsText(final By by, final String value) { 
    browser.waitTillElementPresent(by);
        Boolean result = new WebDriverWait(getWebDriver(),Browser.DEFAULT_WAIT_TIMEOUT_SECONDS).until(new ExpectedCondition<Boolean>() {
            @Override
            public Boolean apply(WebDriver arg0) {
                WebElement elem = arg0.findElement(by);
                String text = "";
                if (elem.isDisplayed()) {
                    text = elem.getText();
                } else {
                  //have to use JavaScript because HtmlUnit will return empty string for a hidden element's text
                    text = (String) executeScript("return arguments[0].innerHTML", elem);
                    text = text.replace("<BR></BR>", "\n"); //scary
                }
                return text.contains(value);
            }
        });
        Assert.assertTrue(by.toString() + " contains value ["+value+"]", result);
}

Yes, it's ugly as sin. And note the text.replace("<BR></BR>") - this is because HTML tags aren't escaped when you pull out the raw data. The WebDriver will nicely 'unescape' this if you call #getText() on the element.

I've now put in a request to our IT guys to install X-Windows on our CI servers so we can run the FirefoxDriver. We've had nothing but trouble from the HTMLUnitDriver, and it's incredibly slow to boot.

score 1 · Answer 2 · edited Dec 01 '20 at 19:29

1

In Selenium 2, I used this, and it works for me fine.

driver.getPageSource().contains(text);

edited Dec 01 '20 at 19:29

Peter Mortensen

30,738
21
105
131

answered Jun 04 '12 at 16:31

Dan

950
8
13

score 1 · Answer 3 · edited Dec 01 '20 at 19:31

1

You can use getText() even if it doesn't have any content. That should not be the issue.

From your answer, the issue seems to be that you didn’t instantiate the FirefoxDriver.

Selenium WebDriver will only interact with visible elements, and therefore the text of an invisible element will always be returned as an empty string.

edited Dec 01 '20 at 19:31

Peter Mortensen

30,738
21
105
131

answered Sep 01 '15 at 20:36

Kartik

23
4

score 1 · Answer 4 · edited Dec 01 '20 at 19:32

You can try using the jsoup library for parsing HTML.

First just load the page content (driver.getPageSource()) to the jsoup document object and use the richness of methods of that excellent library (kudos to the author).

Example:

String pageSource = driver.getPageSource();
Document doc = Jsoup.parse(pageSource);
Elements requestsListRecords = doc.getElementsByTag("table").get(2).getElementsByTag("tr");

score 1 · Accepted Answer · edited Dec 01 '20 at 19:06

1

I just need use a real browser for my webDriver:

webDriver = new FirefoxDriver();

Then it works.

Maybe it is a JavaScript issue.

edited Dec 01 '20 at 19:06

Peter Mortensen

30,738
21
105
131

answered Nov 04 '11 at 08:36

ses

13,174
31
123
226

Though it is true that a Chrome or Firefox driver will work, do you know why the HtmlUnitDriver does not? – Khanetor Oct 22 '15 at 02:11

score 1 · Answer 6 · edited Dec 01 '20 at 19:28

1

It sounds like you are using HTMLUnitDriver. In that case you would need to enable the JavaScript code like below.

HtmlUnitDriver driver = new HtmlUnitDriver();
driver.setJavascriptEnabled(true);

Check out the documentation here.

edited Dec 01 '20 at 19:28

Peter Mortensen

30,738
21
105
131

answered Nov 05 '11 at 17:48

nilesh

14,131
7
65
79

yes you are right, but it does not work, I use Qquery fadeIn() for tahte element - but event with setJavascriptEnabled(true) and with setting a wait(xxxx) it does not work.. so I prefer use Real browser instead. – ses Nov 07 '11 at 08:20

score 0 · Answer 7 · answered Nov 28 '14 at 05:59

0

Try this

WebDriver driver = new YourBrowserdirver(); //FirefoxDriver or ChromeDriver etc..
String Text = driver.findElement(By.id("myDiv")).getText();
System.out.println("The text present in myDiv = "+Text);

answered Nov 28 '14 at 05:59

Rahul Das

1
1

score 0 · Answer 8 · edited Dec 01 '20 at 19:07

0

You can also verify the text in the div by:

$browser.is_element_present("//div[@name='myDiv']/.[text()='0']")

edited Dec 01 '20 at 19:07

Peter Mortensen

30,738
21
105
131

answered Nov 05 '11 at 11:05

GirishB

524
1
3
9

Selenium WebDriver getText

8 Answers8

Linked