Search code examples
pythonseleniumwebdriverwait

How can I get the text from an temporary alert using chromedriver Selenium and Python?

I'm writing a program to automatically book a desk in my library using chromedriver. I'm looping through all seats looking for one that isn't booked already, then using

driver.find_element(By.XPATH, xpath).click()

on both starting and ending time to book the seat. After clicking, there can be different alerts that can pop up, confirming the booking or pointing out an issue. These alerts disappear after a few seconds. I'm trying to use the text of the pop up to verify whether the booking has been successful or not.

So far, I've tried this:

try:
    WebDriverWait(driver, 10).until(EC.alert_is_present)
    alert = driver.switch_to.alert
    text = alert.text
    if "some Text" in text:
        print("Booking successful")
    elif "some other text" in text:
        print("booking not successful")
except:
    print("no alert")

However, the alert does not get recognized, I always get "no alert".

This is how the alerts looks like:

<div data-notify="container" class="col-xs-11 col-sm-4 alert alert-success animated fadeInDown" role="alert" data-notify-position="top-center" style="display: inline-block; margin: 0px auto; position: fixed; transition: all 0.5s ease-in-out 0s; z-index: 5000; top: 20px; left: 0px; right: 0px;">
    <button type="button" aria-hidden="true" class="close" data-notify="dismiss" style="position: absolute; right: 10px; top: 5px; z-index: 5002;"> × </button>
    <span data-notify="icon"> </span>
    <span data-notify="title"></span>
    <span data-notify="message"> Booking successful. </span>
    <a href="#" target="_blank" data-notify="url"> </a>
</div>
Solution

  • The WebElement looks like an alert due to the presence of classnames like alert, alert-success, etc. But it's not an actual alert

    To print the text Booking successful. from the alert you can use either of the following Locator Strategies:

    • Using css_selector and get_attribute("innerHTML"):

      print(driver.find_element(By.CSS_SELECTOR, "div[class*='alert'][data-notify='container'] span[data-notify='message']").get_attribute("innerHTML"))

    • Using xpath and text attribute:

      print(driver.find_element(By.XPATH, "//div[contains(@class, 'alert') and @data-notify='container']//span[@data-notify='message']").text)

    Ideally you need to induce WebDriverWait for the visibility_of_element_located() and you can use either of the following Locator Strategies:

    • Using CSS_SELECTOR and text attribute:

      print(WebDriverWait(driver, 20).until(EC.visibility_of_element_located((By.CSS_SELECTOR, "div[class*='alert'][data-notify='container'] span[data-notify='message']"))).text)

    • Using XPATH and get_attribute("innerHTML"):

      print(WebDriverWait(driver, 20).until(EC.visibility_of_element_located((By.XPATH, "//div[contains(@class, 'alert') and @data-notify='container']//span[@data-notify='message']"))).get_attribute("innerHTML"))

    • Note : You have to add the following imports :

      from selenium.webdriver.support.ui import WebDriverWait
from selenium.webdriver.common.by import By
from selenium.webdriver.support import expected_conditions as EC

    You can find a relevant discussion in How to retrieve the text of a WebElement using Selenium - Python

    References

    Link to useful documentation: