How to Use XPath and CSS Selectors in Selenium to Extract Text Easily

Learn how to efficiently extract text from web elements using `XPath` and `CSS selectors` in Selenium. This guide provides clear examples and practical code snippets for straightforward implementation.
---
This video is based on the question https://stackoverflow.com/q/72218342/ asked by the user 'prit' ( https://stackoverflow.com/u/16532264/ ) and on the answer https://stackoverflow.com/a/72218785/ provided by the user 'Md. Fazlul Hoque' ( https://stackoverflow.com/u/12848411/ ) at 'Stack Overflow' website. Thanks to these great users and Stackexchange community for their contributions.

Visit these links for original content and any more details, such as alternate solutions, latest updates/developments on topic, comments, revision history etc. For example, the original title of the Question was: xpath to extract the text in selenium

Also, Content (except music) licensed under CC BY-SA https://meta.stackexchange.com/help/licensing
The original Question post is licensed under the 'CC BY-SA 4.0' ( https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ ) license, and the original Answer post is licensed under the 'CC BY-SA 4.0' ( https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ ) license.

If anything seems off to you, please feel free to write me at vlogize [AT] gmail [DOT] com.
---
Extracting Text in Selenium: A Guide to Using XPath and CSS Selectors

When automating web browsers with Selenium, one common challenge developers face is extracting specific text from web elements. For instance, you may need to extract a unique identifier, like a case ID, from a specific part of a webpage. In this guide, we'll tackle this problem step by step, using both XPath and CSS selectors as our extraction methods.

The Problem

Let’s consider the following HTML snippet as an example:

[[See Video to Reveal this Text or Code Snippet]]

From this code, our aim is to extract the text 412312513, which represents the case ID that is crucial for our application.

The Solution

Using XPath

XPath is a powerful query language that allows us to navigate through elements and attributes in an XML or HTML document. For our case, we can utilize XPath functions to find the text we need effectively. The syntax for the extraction would be as follows:

[[See Video to Reveal this Text or Code Snippet]]

This XPath expression does the following:

//*[@ class="note-title"] locates the element with the class note-title (the header part).

/following-sibling::p accesses the immediate next sibling element, which is the <p> tag containing our desired case ID.

Using CSS Selectors

Alternatively, we can achieve the same outcome using CSS selectors, which can be simpler and easier to read. The CSS selector for this extraction would be:

[[See Video to Reveal this Text or Code Snippet]]

This selector works as follows:

.note.note-info h4 selects the <h4> element with both note and note-info classes.

+ p subsequently targets the immediate sibling <p> element, which contains the case ID.

Implementation with Selenium

Now, let's see how we can implement this extraction in our Selenium script. Below are examples for both XPath and CSS selectors.

Example with XPath

[[See Video to Reveal this Text or Code Snippet]]

Example with CSS Selector

[[See Video to Reveal this Text or Code Snippet]]

Conclusion

Retrieving specific text data from web elements is a crucial task in web automation, and both XPath and CSS selectors provide effective means to accomplish this. By understanding and implementing these techniques, you can efficiently extract data such as case IDs from web pages using Selenium.

Feel free to adopt either method based on your project's requirements and personal preference. Happy automating!

Видео How to Use XPath and CSS Selectors in Selenium to Extract Text Easily канала vlogize