Get Element Text with getText()

How it works

getText() returns the text a user can see in an element, including the text of its child elements, as one String. Selenium works it out the way the browser renders it: leading and trailing whitespace is trimmed, and block elements inside the element become separate lines joined by \n.

Visibility matters. The hiddenText paragraph on Text Messages contains text in the HTML but has visibility: hidden, so getText() returns an empty string. To read text that is in the DOM but not shown, read getDomProperty("textContent") instead, and trim it, because textContent keeps the source whitespace.

Whitespace inside the element is preserved only where the browser shows it. The unevenText element is a pre, so the runs of spaces between its words come back exactly as displayed.

About the assignment

Text Messages shows the same kind of text in three wrappers: plain inside a p, bold inside a strong in a p, and italic inside an em in a p. You read all three through their paragraph ids to see that getText() returns the words without the formatting tags.

What you will do

1. 1Find each paragraph by its id: plainText, boldText and italicText.
2. 2Call getText() on each paragraph, not on the inner strong or em. The child's text is included anyway.
3. 3Print three lines with the labels Plain:, Bold: and Italic:, in that order.

Common mistakes

• Calling getText() on an input

  Inputs keep their text in value, so getText() returns an empty string. Use getAttribute("value"), as in lessons 17 and 18.

• Expecting hidden text

  An element hidden with CSS gives an empty string, not an exception, so a missing assertion value can look like a page bug. Check isDisplayed() first or read textContent.

• Comparing against the raw HTML

  The plain paragraph has spaces around its text in the source. getText() trims them, so compare against the trimmed text a user sees, not the markup.

In a real test suite

Related lessons

• XPath Axes - Parent and SiblingThe bold paragraph from this lesson, reached through XPath axes.
• Get Attribute Value with getAttribute()Read value, href and other attributes that getText() does not return.
• isDisplayed() - Check Element VisibilityCheck isDisplayed() before trusting an empty getText() result.

To try one of these calls on any page without a task, open the Online Selenium Java Compiler.

Starter code

The editor above opens with this code. Fill in the TODO lines, then run and submit it.

import org.openqa.selenium.*;
import org.openqa.selenium.chrome.ChromeDriver;

public class Main {
    public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {
        WebDriver driver = new ChromeDriver();
        driver.get("https://testkru.com/Elements/TextMessages");
        
        // TODO: Get and print text of plainText, boldText, and italicText
        
        driver.quit();
    }
}