Search code examples
python-2.7seleniumpyvirtualdisplay

find_element is not printing the actual text

from pyvirtualdisplay import Display
from selenium import webdriver
from selenium.webdriver.common.keys import Keys
import time


display = Display(visible=0, size=(800, 600))
display.start()

driver = webdriver.Firefox()
driver.get('http://www.espn.go.com')
driver.implicitly_wait(10)
print driver.find_element_by_class_name("timestamp")
driver.quit()
display.stop()

My result is 

<selenium.webdriver.remote.webelement.WebElement (session="7b9bac74-fc4e-436f-ba2b-f723bc1e4abd", element="{e91179d6-990c-463f-b56b-a2a38fabecdb}")>

instead of the time stamp: ex: 3h

It does this for everything, I get that weird session and element code instead of the actual text. Even when I change to another element or try a different website. Also, even when I use print driver.find_element_by_xpath("//*[@class='timestamp']")

Solution

  • What you see printed is the WebElement object string representation. WebElement instance is returned when you call any find_element_by_* method in Python-Selenium.

    Instead, you meant to get the text:

    driver.find_element_by_class_name("timestamp").text