Transforming puppeteer ElementHandle into a DOM object for property inspection

Other Questions Puppeteer
1

Help needed with puppeteer ElementHandle conversion

I’m working on a project using puppeteer and I’m stuck. I want to turn an ElementHandle into a DOM object so I can look at all its properties easily. Right now, I have to use $eval for each property I want to check. It’s a real pain.

Here’s what I’m doing now:

const listItem = await page.waitForSelector('.item-list li');
const linkText = await listItem.$eval('a', (el) => el.textContent);

But this only gets me one property at a time. I want to be able to explore all the properties of the a element without writing separate $eval calls for each one.

Is there a way to turn the ElementHandle into a regular DOM object? That would make things so much easier. Any ideas would be super helpful. Thanks!

2

While it’s not possible to directly convert an ElementHandle to a DOM object outside the browser context, there’s a technique I’ve found useful for inspecting multiple properties efficiently. You can leverage the evaluate method to execute a function in the browser context and return an object with all the properties you’re interested in.

Here’s an approach I’ve used:

const listItem = await page.waitForSelector('.item-list li');
const elementProperties = await listItem.evaluate(el => {
    const link = el.querySelector('a');
    return JSON.parse(JSON.stringify(link));
});

This method serializes the element’s properties into a JSON object, which you can then inspect on the Puppeteer side. Keep in mind that this won’t include methods or non-serializable properties, but it’s a good starting point for most use cases. You can then access properties like elementProperties.href, elementProperties.className, etc., without multiple $eval calls.

3

I’ve been in a similar situation, and I found a workaround that might help you. Instead of converting the ElementHandle to a DOM object (which isn’t directly possible due to how Puppeteer works), you can use the evaluate method to run a function in the browser context.

Here’s what I do:

const listItem = await page.waitForSelector('.item-list li');
const linkProperties = await listItem.evaluate(el => {
    const link = el.querySelector('a');
    return {
        href: link.href,
        text: link.textContent,
        className: link.className,
        // Add any other properties you need
    };
});

This way, you can get multiple properties in one go. It’s not exactly turning it into a DOM object, but it gives you more flexibility than individual $eval calls. You can expand the object to include as many properties as you need.

Just remember, you can only return serializable data from evaluate. If you need more complex interactions, you might need to use multiple evaluate calls or structure your code differently.

4

hey, i’ve got a trick that might help. instead of converting the elementhandle, try using page.evaluate() to grab all the properties you want in one go. something like:

const props = await page.evaluate(() => {
  const a = document.querySelector('.item-list li a');
  return { text: a.textContent, href: a.href, id: a.id };
});

this way you can get everything at once. hope this helps!