Selenium is a powerful Python module used for browser automation. It allows you to interact with web pages just like a real user- click buttons, fill forms, and fetch values from elements.

The get_attribute() method fetches the value of an element’s HTML attribute.

• It first tries to get the property value.
• If the property is not found, it looks for the HTML attribute.
• If neither exists, it returns None.

In this article, we’ll learn how to use the get_attribute() method in Selenium to extract an element’s attribute value (like href, id, placeholder, etc).

Syntax

element.get_attribute(“attribute_name”)

Parameters:

attribute_name: name of the attribute that needs to be fetched.

Return Type: the attribute value as a string, or None if the attribute is not found.

Installation

Install the selenium module using pip, use this command:

pip install selenium

Examples of get_attribute()

Example 1: Get href from a Link

Let’s start by retrieving the href attribute of a link element on the GeeksforGeeks homepage.

from selenium import webdriver

# Create WebDriver object
driver = webdriver.Firefox()

driver.get("https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/")

el = driver.find_element("link text", "DSA")

print(el.get_attribute("href"))

Terminal Output:

Terminal output

Output after visiting the URL in the terminal:

DSA Tutorial page

Explanation:

• get() method opens the GeeksforGeeks homepage.
• find_element() method finds the Courses link using link text locator.
• get_attribute(‘href’) fetches the destination URL of the anchor (<a>) tag.

Example 2: Get placeholder Attribute from an Input Field

In this example, we’ll extract the placeholder text from the Google search input box.

from selenium import webdriver

# Initialize Firefox WebDriver
driver = webdriver.Firefox()

driver.get("https://www.google.com/")

box = driver.find_element("name", "q")

print(box.get_attribute("placeholder"))

Explanation:

• get() method navigates to Google’s homepage.
• find_element(“name”, “q”) locates the search input box using the name locator.
• get_attribute(“placeholder”) returns the default placeholder text, such as “Search”.

Other Locator Examples

You can also locate elements using other strategies like id or xpath.

el = driver.find_element("id", "link")
el = driver.find_element("xpath", "//a[@id='link']")

Explanation:

• find_element(“id”, …) locates elements using the id attribute.
• find_element(“xpath”, …) allows more complex querying via XPath.
• These elements can then be passed to get_attribute() for attribute extraction.

Example 3: Get href of Multiple Anchor Tags

Here’s how to extract the href attribute from all anchor (<a>) tags on a page.

from selenium import webdriver

driver = webdriver.Firefox()
driver.get("https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/")

links = driver.find_elements("tag name", "a")

for link in links:
    print(link.get_attribute("href"))

Output:

Terminal output of all the hrefs

Explanation:

• get() method opens the GeeksforGeeks site.
• find_elements() returns a list of all anchor tags (<a>).
• get_attribute(“href”) fetches each link’s destination.