How to get text of an element in Selenium WebDriver, without including child element text?

Here's a general solution:

def get_text_excluding_children(driver, element):
    return driver.execute_script("""
    return jQuery(arguments[0]).contents().filter(function() {
        return this.nodeType == Node.TEXT_NODE;
    }).text();
    """, element)

The element passed to the function can be something obtained from the find_element...() methods (i.e. it can be a WebElement object).

Or if you don't have jQuery or don't want to use it you can replace the body of the function above above with this:

return self.driver.execute_script("""
var parent = arguments[0];
var child = parent.firstChild;
var ret = "";
while(child) {
    if (child.nodeType === Node.TEXT_NODE)
        ret += child.textContent;
    child = child.nextSibling;
}
return ret;
""", element) 

I'm actually using this code in a test suite.

In the HTML which you have shared:

<div id="a">This is some
   <div id="b">text</div>
</div>

The text This is some is within a text node. To depict the text node in a structured way:

<div id="a">
    This is some
   <div id="b">text</div>
</div>

---

This Usecase

To extract and print the text This is some from the text node using Selenium's python client you have 2 ways as follows:

• Using splitlines(): You can identify the parent element i.e. <div id="a">, extract the innerHTML and then use splitlines() as follows:

  • using xpath:

    print(driver.find_element_by_xpath("//div[@id='a']").get_attribute("innerHTML").splitlines()[0])
    

  • using xpath:

    print(driver.find_element_by_css_selector("div#a").get_attribute("innerHTML").splitlines()[0])
    

• Using execute_script(): You can also use the execute_script() method which can synchronously execute JavaScript in the current window/frame as follows:

  • using xpath and firstChild:

    parent_element = driver.find_element_by_xpath("//div[@id='a']")
    print(driver.execute_script('return arguments[0].firstChild.textContent;', parent_element).strip())
    

  • using xpath and childNodes[n]:

    parent_element = driver.find_element_by_xpath("//div[@id='a']")
    print(driver.execute_script('return arguments[0].childNodes[1].textContent;', parent_element).strip())
    

def get_true_text(tag):
    children = tag.find_elements_by_xpath('*')
    original_text = tag.text
    for child in children:
        original_text = original_text.replace(child.text, '', 1)
    return original_text