Selenium WebDriver getText()

Question

Using Selenium WebDriver .getText() function in Java, I'm trying to access some text without any positive results. Is not even in the WebElement object. The text I want to fetch is: "eNewsletter Sign Up"

The HTML code from where I am fetching this looks like this:

<a class="footer" href="/contact/email-sign-up/" onclick="aloneTracking('footerEmailSignUp')">eNewsletter Sign Up</a>

And the Java code looks like this:

     List<WebElement> idElemList = driver.findElements(By.className("footer"));

    System.out.println(idElemList.size());
    String str = "";
    if (idElemList.size() > 0) {
        WebElement firstElement = idElemList.get(0);
        str = firstElement.toString();
        System.out.println("**** : " + str);
        str = firstElement.getText();
        System.out.println("¨¨" + str);
    }

In the first System.out.println() I get that the list is nine elements long.

In the second:

<a onclick="aloneTracking('footerEmailSignUp')" href="/contact/email-sign-up/" class="footer">

In the third:

<a onclick="aloneTracking('footerEmailSignUp')" href="/contact/email-sign-up/" class="footer">

How can I get that text?

Answer 1

An easier solution would be to find the element by link text and call getText on that element

By.ByLinkText By.ByPartialLinkText

Answer 2

In the second and the third is the value of the String str after doing:

Second:

firstElement = idElemList.get(0);
str = firstElement.toString();
System.out.println("xxxx : " + str);

Result of System.out.println:

 xxxx : <a onclick="aloneTracking('footerEmailSignUp')" href="/contact/email-sign-up/" class="footer">

Third:

WebElement firstElement = idElemList.get(0);
str = firstElement.getText();
System.out.println("¨¨ : " + str);

Result of System.out.println:

¨¨ : <a onclick="aloneTracking('footerEmailSignUp')" href="/contact/email-sign-up/" class="footer">