How can I split the string by into a list using Selenium and Java

Question

My string when printed looks like:

line1
line2
line3

as it's a extracted with selenium and it looks in html:

line1
<br>
line2
<br>
line3
<br>

I want to transform that string to list of 3 elements, i tried the following:

List<String> test= new ArrayList<String>(Arrays.asList(mystring.split("<br>")));

but it did not work i got a list of 1 element as follows:

[line1
line2
line3]

Answer 1

Arrays.asList

already returns the list, no need to wrap it once again.

List<String> test= Arrays.asList(mystring.split("<br>"));

Answer 2

you can use Arrays.asList directly as follow

List<String> result = Arrays.asList(myString.split("<br>"));

But the List we get has a limit,this list is Unmodifiable, if you want to do

result.add("element");

you will get an UnsupportedOperationException

if you want to modify your list as follow,you can get it such as

String[] split = myString.split("<br>");
List<String> result = Arrays.stream(split).collect(Collectors.toList());

you can get a modifiable list.

Answer 3

To split() the text by <br> and place into a list you need to induce WebDriverWait for the visibilityOfElementLocated() and you can use either of the following Locator Strategies:

• Using cssSelector and split():

  String[] cssParts = new WebDriverWait(driver, 20).until(ExpectedConditions.visibilityOfElementLocated(By.cssSelector("parentElementCssSelector"))).getText().split("<br>");
  System.out.println(cssParts);
  

• Using xpath and split():

  String[] xpathParts = new WebDriverWait(driver, 20).until(ExpectedConditions.visibilityOfElementLocated(By.xpath("parentElementXpath"))).getText().split("<br>");
  System.out.println(xpathParts);
  

References

You can find a couple of relevant discussions in:

• How to extract the text 73 from the text 1-16 of 73 results from the search result summary within https://www.amazon.com using Selenium and Java