Using Selenium to location and automate elements via thier visible text.

visible_text_example.py

# Note I haven't executed this code it's 
# written from memory - its purpose is
# as an example.
 
from selenium import webdriver
 
wd = webdriver.Firefox()
 
# ... open a website etc.
 
wd.find_element_by_xpath('//*[text()="Some Text"]') # finds first element where the text content is "Some Text"
 
 
# This function shows how easy it is to 
# match any visible text using selenium.
# for a real implementation you would want to 
# consider which attributes may be visible 
# rather than search every attribute (to avoid
# false positives). Also it doesn't behave 
# correctly if nothing is found.
 
def find_element_by_visible_text(wd, text):
    """Finds any element by visible text.
    """
    xpath = '//*[@*="{0}" or text()="{0}"]'.format(text)
    found = [elem for elem in wd.find_elements_by_xpath(xpath) 
             if elem.is_displayed()]
    return found[0]
 
 
find_element_by_visible_text(wd, "Username or email").send_keys('agjasimpson')