How to Find Element by Text in Selenium WebDriver

Locating WebElements precisely is essential for reliable Selenium testing. One commonly used technique is to find element by text in Selenium, which helps identify elements based on their visible text, especially when other attributes aren’t unique or consistent.

What Is Find Element by Text in Selenium?

In Selenium, findElement() method by text refers to locating a WebElement based on its visible text content. It is useful when attributes like ID or ClassName are dynamic or unreliable for identification.

To locate an element by text, XPath is typically used as the locator strategy, leveraging the text() function.

Methods to Find Element by Text in Selenium

To find element by text in Selenium, you can use text() and contains() methods in your XPath with the findElement() method.

• • text(): This built-in method in Selenium is used with XPath to locate an element based on its exact text value:
    
    WebElement ele = driver.findElement(By.xpath(“//[text()=’textvalue’]”))

    1	WebElement ele = driver.findElement(By.xpath(“//[text()=’textvalue’]”))

You can also extract text from a webpage and print it in the console using the getText() method.

• contains(): It is another built-in method which is used with XPath. However, this is used when writing the locator based on a partial text match.
  
  WebElement ele =driver.findElement(By.xpath(“//[contains(text(),’textvalue’)]”))

  1	WebElement ele =driver.findElement(By.xpath(“//[contains(text(),’textvalue’)]”))

Using findElement() Method for Complete Text Match

To match complete text using text() method, you can use findElement() method in Selenium. Here’s an example:

Test Scenario:

Typically, you might run Selenium scripts on a local grid setup. However, here we’ll execute the test script on an online Selenium Grid using LambdaTest. This allows us to run tests in parallel across various browser and OS combinations without managing any infrastructure.

Step 1: Inspect the Element

1. 1. Open the web page and right-click on the Checkbox Demo link.
   2. Click Inspect to open the browser developer tools. In the Elements tab, you’ll see the HTML structure of the web page.
   3. Use the anchor tag and the text “Checkbox Demo” to find this element using XPath.

Step 2: Setup Project

1. Open Eclipse IDE and create a Maven project named FindElementByText.
2. Inside the src folder, add a new package named test to hold all test files.
3. Create a BaseTest.java file to handle WebDriver setup, teardown, and LambdaTest cloud grid connection.
4. Update the pom.xml file with the latest stable versions of Selenium 4 and TestNG from the Maven repository.

Step 3: Implementation

1. Update your pom.xml file with Selenium and TestNG dependencies:
   
   <project xmlns="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:schemaLocation="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0 https://maven.apache.org/xsd/maven-4.0.0.xsd"> <modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion> <groupId>FindElementByText</groupId> <artifactId>FindElementByText</artifactId> <version>0.0.1-SNAPSHOT</version> <build> <sourceDirectory>src</sourceDirectory> <plugins> <plugin> <artifactId>maven-compiler-plugin</artifactId> <version>3.8.1</version> <configuration> <release>17</release> </configuration> </plugin> </plugins> </build> <dependencies> <dependency> <groupId>org.seleniumhq.selenium</groupId> <artifactId>selenium-java</artifactId> <version>4.16.1</version> </dependency> <dependency> <groupId>org.testng</groupId> <artifactId>testng</artifactId> <version>7.8.0</version> <scope>test</scope> </dependency> </dependencies> </project>

   1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33

   <project xmlns="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0"    xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"    xsi:schemaLocation="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0 https://maven.apache.org/xsd/maven-4.0.0.xsd">    <modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion>    <groupId>FindElementByText</groupId>    <artifactId>FindElementByText</artifactId>    <version>0.0.1-SNAPSHOT</version>    <build>        <sourceDirectory>src</sourceDirectory>        <plugins>            <plugin>                <artifactId>maven-compiler-plugin</artifactId>                <version>3.8.1</version>                <configuration>                    <release>17</release>                </configuration>            </plugin>        </plugins>    </build>    <dependencies>        <dependency>            <groupId>org.seleniumhq.selenium</groupId>            <artifactId>selenium-java</artifactId>            <version>4.16.1</version>        </dependency>        <dependency>            <groupId>org.testng</groupId>            <artifactId>testng</artifactId>            <version>7.8.0</version>            <scope>test</scope>        </dependency>    </dependencies> </project>

2. Create BaseTest.java file to set up and tear down the WebDriver, with connectivity to LambdaTest Selenium Grid.
   
   public class BaseTest { public RemoteWebDriver driver = null; String username = System.getenv("LT_USERNAME") == null ? "" : System.getenv("LT_USERNAME"); String accessKey = System.getenv("LT_ACCESS_KEY") == null ? "" : System.getenv("LT_ACCESS"); @BeforeTest public void setup() { try { ChromeOptions chromeOptions = new ChromeOptions(); chromeOptions.setPlatformName("Windows 10"); chromeOptions.setBrowserVersion("121.0"); HashMap&lt;String, Object&gt; ltOptions = new HashMap&lt;String, Object&gt;(); ltOptions.put("build", "Find Element by Text"); ltOptions.put("project", "Find Element by Text in Selenium"); chromeOptions.setCapability("LT:Options", ltOptions); driver = new RemoteWebDriver( new URL("https://" + username + ":" + accessKey + "@hub.lambdatest.com/wd/hub"), chromeOptions); } catch (MalformedURLException e) { e.printStackTrace(); } } @AfterTest public void tearDown() { driver.quit(); } }

   1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42

   public class BaseTest {         public RemoteWebDriver driver = null;          String username = System.getenv("LT_USERNAME") == null ? "" : System.getenv("LT_USERNAME");      String accessKey = System.getenv("LT_ACCESS_KEY") == null ? "" : System.getenv("LT_ACCESS");          @BeforeTest      public void setup()      {          try          {              ChromeOptions chromeOptions = new ChromeOptions();              chromeOptions.setPlatformName("Windows 10");              chromeOptions.setBrowserVersion("121.0");                                       HashMap<String, Object> ltOptions = new HashMap<String, Object>(); ltOptions.put("build", "Find Element by Text");        ltOptions.put("project", "Find Element by Text in Selenium");              chromeOptions.setCapability("LT:Options", ltOptions);                  driver = new RemoteWebDriver(                      new URL("https://" + username + ":" + accessKey + "@hub.lambdatest.com/wd/hub"), chromeOptions);          }          catch (MalformedURLException e)          {              e.printStackTrace();          }      }              @AfterTest      public void tearDown()      {          driver.quit();      } }

   
   

   You can get your LambdaTest Username and Access Key from your Account Settings > Password & Security to connect to the cloud grid for test execution. Alternatively, you can configure these as environment variables and directly fetch them in the test script.

   After that, create a HashMap type variable to pass the additional browser capabilities required by the LambdaTest platform to support test execution on their cloud grid.

   You can fetch the required browser capabilities for the LambdaTest platform by navigating to the Automation Capabilities Generator.

3. Create TestFindByTextForCompleteMatch.java file to perform the actual text match operation.
   public class TestFindByTextForCompleteMatch extends BaseTest{ @Test public void testFindElementByCompleteTextMatch() { System.out.println("Logging into Lambda Test Selenium Playground"); driver.get("https://www.lambdatest.com/selenium-playground/"); WebElement checkBoxDemoPage= driver.findElement(By.xpath("//a[text()='Checkbox Demo']")); checkBoxDemoPage.click(); System.out.println("Clicked on the Checkbox Demo Page"); WebElement header=driver.findElement(By.xpath("//h1")); System.out.println("The header of the page is:"+header.getText()); } }

   1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15

   public class TestFindByTextForCompleteMatch extends BaseTest{        @Test    public void testFindElementByCompleteTextMatch()    {        System.out.println("Logging into Lambda Test Selenium Playground");        driver.get("https://www.lambdatest.com/selenium-playground/");        WebElement checkBoxDemoPage= driver.findElement(By.xpath("//a[text()='Checkbox Demo']"));        checkBoxDemoPage.click();        System.out.println("Clicked on the Checkbox Demo Page");        WebElement header=driver.findElement(By.xpath("//h1"));        System.out.println("The header of the page is:"+header.getText());    } }

Once the tests are completed and executed, you can view your test results on the LambdaTest Web Automation dashboard.

The video below will help you write your first test script in Selenium using Java by interacting with different WebElements.

Using findElement() Method for Partial Text Match

To locate an element with a partial text match in Selenium, you can use XPath with the contains() function to find elements containing the specified partial text.

Test Scenario:

Step 1: Inspect the Element

1. 1. Right-click on any WebElement with “Table” in its name and select Inspect to open the browser developer tools.
   2. In the Elements tab, use the anchor tag and partial text “Table” with XPath contains() function to locate these elements.

If there are more than one WebElement, we will use the findElements() method by text in Selenium.

The findElements() method by text in Selenium returns the list of WebElements that match the locator value, unlike the findElement() method, which returns only a single WebElement. If there are no matching elements within the web page, the findElements() method returns an empty list.

Step 2: Implementation

Create a new test class file named TestFindByTextForPartialMatch.java and add the following code:

Once the test executes, you can verify the results in the LambdaTest Web Automation dashboard.

Using findElement() Method With text() and contains() Methods

Let’s look at how to find element by text in Selenium for finding a WebElement that contains a specific text using text() and contains() methods.

Test Scenario:

Step 1: Inspect the Element

Right-click on the Dynamic Data Loading link and select Inspect to open DevTools and identify the element’s locator.

Step 2: Implementation

We target the element containing the specific text “Dynamic” to perform the click action. To achieve this, we use the findElement() method with an XPath expression that combines the text() and contains() methods.

Create a new test class file called TestFindByTextForSpecificContainingText.java and add the test code to perform a set of actions as shown below.

Once the tests are completed, you can also view your test results, logs, and the test recording as well in your LambdaTest Web Automation dashboard.

Conclusion

In this blog on how to find element by text in Selenium, we explored finding an element using text in Selenium. We saw how to use the text() method in complete and partial text matches. We also saw how we can use it in the case of findElements() method and get a list of WebElements through text match.

Vipul Gupta

Vipul Gupta is a passionate Quality Engineer with 6+ years of experience and keen interest in automation testing of Web and API based applications. He is having experience in designing and maintaining various automation frameworks. Currently working as Sr. SDET, he enjoys reading and learning about new test practices and frameworks.

See author's profile