Selenium prints empty innerHTML/innerText of an element

Question

With Selenium, why does the following function print empty string? Same if I try 'innerText' instead of 'innerHTML'.

send_keys part works fine though.

def button_clicked(self):
        browser = webdriver.Firefox()
        browser.get('https://www.google.com')
        search_box = browser.find_element_by_xpath("//input[@title='Search']")
        search_box_HTML = search_box.get_attribute('innerHTML')
        print(search_box_HTML)

Can you sum up your Manual Steps which you are trying to Automate? — undetected Selenium
– undetected Selenium, Commented Feb 18, 2018 at 14:05
This code is just to put the print statement in some context. What I am interested in is why does innerHTML` and innerText not work with Python in Selenium. For example, when automating IE through VBA I can print innerHTML with getAttribute("innerHTML") without a problem. — barciewicz
– barciewicz, Commented Feb 18, 2018 at 15:52
Won't comment about innerText() but getAttribute("innerHTML") is proven, powerful and working when used in proper context. However I don't understand the line/xpath find_element_by_xpath("//input[@title='Szukaj']") from your code while I can't see the context of textbox in your code as well. — undetected Selenium
– undetected Selenium, Commented Feb 18, 2018 at 16:03
I have removed the 'textbox' line as irrelevant to the problem. find_element_by_xpath("//input[@title='Search']") locates the input box on Google. I want to print its innerHTML. — barciewicz
– barciewicz, Commented Feb 18, 2018 at 16:31

Ian Lesperance · Accepted Answer · 2018-02-18 01:01:13Z

2

An <input> has no inner content—text or HTML. Instead, the data entered by the user is stored in its value attribute, which can be retrieved with WebElement#get_attribute():

search_box.get_attribute(“value”)

answered Feb 18, 2018 at 1:01

Ian Lesperance

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undetected Selenium · Accepted Answer · 2018-02-18 18:41:19Z

If you look at the HTML of the page https://www.google.com and inspect the Search Box WebElement which you have identified as :

find_element_by_xpath("//input[@title='Search']")

The WebElement is defined as follows :

<input class="gsfi" id="lst-ib" maxlength="2048" name="q" autocomplete="off" title="Search" type="text" value="" aria-label="Search" aria-haspopup="false" role="combobox" aria-autocomplete="list" dir="ltr" spellcheck="false" style="border: none; padding: 0px; margin: 0px; height: auto; width: 100%; background: url(&quot;data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAID/AMDAwAAAACH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAICRAEAOw%3D%3D&quot;) transparent; position: absolute; z-index: 6; left: 0px; outline: none;">

`get_attribute("innerHTML")`

As per the documentation, Element.innerHTML gets the HTML syntax describing the element's descendants and get_attribute() is defined as follows :

    def get_attribute(self, name):
    """Gets the given attribute or property of the element.

    This method will first try to return the value of a property with the
    given name. If a property with that name doesn't exist, it returns the
    value of the attribute with the same name. If there's no attribute with
    that name, ``None`` is returned.

    Values which are considered truthy, that is equals "true" or "false",
    are returned as booleans.  All other non-``None`` values are returned
    as strings.  For attributes or properties which do not exist, ``None``
    is returned.

    :Args:
        - name - Name of the attribute/property to retrieve.

    Example::

        # Check if the "active" CSS class is applied to an element.
        is_active = "active" in target_element.get_attribute("class")

    """

Hence, as the WebElement i.e. Search Box doesn't have a descendant, so get_attribute('innerHTML') returns empty

@barciewicz Upvote this/any Answer which is/was useful to you for the benefit of future readers.

haraprasadj · Accepted Answer · 2018-02-17 23:55:45Z

0

You should change your code to:

search_box.get_attribute('value')

That should do the trick

answered Feb 17, 2018 at 23:55

haraprasadj

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