1

I'm creating a small program to return the name of all the link titles when you search for something on google using selenium

here's the code:

const {Builder,By, Key, until} = require('selenium-webdriver');

driver = new Builder().forBrowser("firefox").build();

var search_query='tigers';

(async()=>{

await driver.get(`https://www.google.com/search?q=${search_query}`);

await driver.findElements(By.css('h3')).then((search_results)=>{ 
 for (var i = 0; i < search_results.length; i++)
  search_results[i].getText().then((text)=>{console.log(text);})
});

console.log('...Task Complete!')
})();

and when you run it the output is as follows:-

...Task Complete!
Tiger - Wikipedia
Top stories
Tigers (2014 film) - Wikipedia
Detroit Tigers (@tigers) · Twitter
Tiger | Species | WWF
Videos
Official Detroit Tigers Website | MLB.com
Tiger | WWF
Tiger - National Geographic Kids
Tiger guide: species facts, how they hunt and where to see in ...
Related searches
Images
Description

Clearly the ...Task Complete! should be logged after the entire function is completed

I don't understand what I'm doing wrong I've used the appropriate await keywords to keep the flow of code orderly, is the error in then()?

Improve this question

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
1

Since your .then(()=>...) doesn't return a Promise, the await keyword at the beginning does nothing. Node has started the Promises of getting the h3's, getting their text content, and logging them, but your misplaced await doesn't tell Node to wait for all that to finish. You'll want to await getting the elements, then synchronously loop through all the elements, awaiting the text, then synchronously print the text, and finally synchronously print "...Task Complete!"

const { Builder, By, Key, until } = require('selenium-webdriver');

const driver = new Builder().forBrowser("firefox").build();

const search_query = 'tigers';

(async () => {
    await driver.get(`https://www.google.com/search?q=${search_query}`);

    const h3Elements = await driver.findElements(By.css('h3'));
    for (const h3 of h3Elements) {
        const text = await h3.getText();
        console.log(text);
    }

    console.log('...Task Complete!')
})();

If you wanted to reduce extra variables, you can do this instead:

const { Builder, By, Key, until } = require('selenium-webdriver');

const driver = new Builder().forBrowser("firefox").build();

const search_query = 'tigers';

(async () => {
    await driver.get(`https://www.google.com/search?q=${search_query}`);

    const h3Elements = await driver.findElements(By.css('h3'));
    for (const h3 of h3Elements) {
        console.log(await h3.getText());
    }

    console.log('...Task Complete!')
})();
Improve this answer
Sign up to request clarification or add additional context in comments.

4 Comments

the first code you sent works thank you so much! but the second reduced variables one doesn't work it shows SyntaxError: missing ) after argument list in the line console.log(await h3.getText()); maybe the issue is with using await in the console log when (h3)=> is not a async function?
@cakelover I've updated the solution for the reduced variables version, please check now
well it's not showing any error during compilation but it gives the same wrong output as asked in the question
Yeah, since that wasn't a top-level await, it was causing problems. You could solve that with Promise.all and .map but that just clutters things up. I've updated the 2nd part, which just removes an unnecessary variable (text), which works since it's in the top-level context for await

Your Answer

By clicking “Post Your Answer”, you agree to our terms of service and acknowledge you have read our privacy policy.