Extract text from webpage with Selenium

Question

I am attempting to extract IP addresses from a webpage using the following code (snippet).

IPs = driver.find_elements_by_xpath("//span[contains(text(), '10.')]")
print(IPs)

The HTML element(s) look like this:

<span style="padding: 1px 4px;float:left;">10.20.20.20</span>

Inspect >> Copy Xpath returns:

//*[@id="T1700010887"]/tbody/tr[2]/td[1]/nobr/span

But all my code prints is what looks like generic selenium code:

[<selenium.webdriver.remote.webelement.WebElement (session="7885f3a61de714f2cb33
b23d03112ff2", element="0.5496921740104628-2")>, <selenium.webdriver.remote.webe
lement.WebElement (session="7885f3a61de714f2cb33b23d03112ff2", element="0.549692
1740104628-3")>, <selenium.webdriver.remote.webelement.WebElement (session="7885
f3a61de714f2cb33b23d03112ff2", element="0.5496921740104628-4")>]

How can I get it to print the actual IP of 10.20.20.20?

francisco sollima · Accepted Answer · 2017-09-11 19:47:55Z

3

find_elements_by_xpath returns a list of selenium objects. You have to access to each object's text attribute. This code should do what you want:

IPs = driver.find_elements_by_xpath("//span[contains(text(), '10.')]")
IPS = [elem.text for elem in IPs]
print(IPs)

answered Sep 11, 2017 at 19:47

francisco sollima

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Verv · Accepted Answer · 2017-09-11 19:49:49Z

2

When using Selenium's element finding methods, you're retrieving a WebElement object. What you want is the element's text, which you can retrieve via the text attribute of your WebElement object. Also, the find_elements_by_xpath method returns a list of WebElements, so you need to iterate it:

IPs = driver.find_elements_by_xpath("//span[contains(text(), '10.')]")

for ip in IPs:
    print(ip.text)

answered Sep 11, 2017 at 19:49

Verv

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1 Comment

I.T. Guy Over a year ago

Excellent explanation and works perfectly. Thank you!

M3RS · Accepted Answer · 2017-09-11 19:47:48Z

2

You need to use text()

IPs = driver.find_elements_by_xpath("//span[contains(text(), '10.')]/text()")

answered Sep 11, 2017 at 19:47

M3RS

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