How to read text from hidden element with Selenium WebDriver?

Question

I'm trying to read the example String 1000 out of a hidden <div> like this:

<div id="hidden_div" style="visibility:hidden">1000</div>

I am aware that WebElement.getText() does not work on hidden elements in Selenium 2 (WebDriver), so I searched for solutions (like this one) and apparently the following code should work:

WebElement hiddenDiv = seleniumDriver.findElement(By.id("hidden_div"));
String n = hiddenDiv.getText(); // does not work (returns "" as expected)
String script = "return arguments[0].innerText";
n = (String) ((JavascriptExecutor) driver).executeScript(script, hiddenDiv);

But it doesn't work for me, the variable n always ends up as null. What am I doing wrong?

Answer 1

EDIT: Oh this works.

String script = "return document.getElementById('hidden_div').innerHTML";

In firefox.

And so does this.

String script = "return arguments[0].innerHTML";

I tried as well but it does not seem to work with pure Javascript. Start the browser with Jquery as mentioned here. How to use JQuery in Selenium? and use following code for script.

String script = "return $('#hidden_div').text();";

This works.