Get web elements as they shown through view source

Question

Using this code below I get the href from a link element.

    Sting url
    List<WebElement> wElements = DriverFactory.getWebDriver().findElements(By.className("link-class"))
    if(wElements.size() > 0) {
        url = wElements[0].getAttribute("href")
    }

The problem is that it finds the element but not the href attribute!!!

If I use "Firefox Inspector" the element appears as <span> with the right class name but without href attribute.

<div><span class="link-class">The Title</span></div>

If I use the "View Page Source" the same element appears as an <a> tag, it has href attribute, but different class name!!!

<a href="/href/attribute/here" class="other-link-class"<span>The Title</span></a>

So, is there any way to get the href of an <a> element but as it shown in "View Page Source"? Using Java of course.

Answer 1

There can be some minor difference in the WebElements as shown through View Source and as shown through Inspector tool.

Both of the methods are two different browser features which allows users to look into the HTML DOM of the webpage. The main difference is that, the View Source shows the HTML that was delivered from the AUT (Application under Test) to the browser. Where as, Inspect element is a Developer Tool e.g. Chrome DevTools to look at the state of the DOM Tree after the browser has applied its error correction and after any Javascript have manipulated the DOM. In short, using View Source you will observe the Javascript but not the HTML. The HTML errors may get corrected in the Inspect Elements tool.

As using the Firefox Inspector you don't find the href attributes, similarly when you execute your tests as the <span> elements doesn't contains the href attributes and the value of the href attributes can't be collected.