Get href attribute in pupeteer Node.js - node.js

Question

I know the common methods such as evaluate for capturing the elements in puppeteer, but I am curious why I cannot get the href attribute in a JavaScript-like approach as
const page = await browser.newPage();
await page.goto('https://www.example.com');
let links = await page.$$('a');
for (let i = 0; i < links.length; i++) {
console.log(links[i].getAttribute('href'));
console.log(links[i].href);
}

Answer 1

await page.$$('a') returns an array with ElementHandles — these are objects with their own pupeteer-specific API, they have not usual DOM API for HTML elements or DOM nodes. So you need either retrieve attributes/properties in the browser context via page.evaluate() or use rather complicated ElementHandles API. This is an example with both ways:
'use strict';
const puppeteer = require('puppeteer');
(async function main() {
try {
const browser = await puppeteer.launch();
const [page] = await browser.pages();
await page.goto('https://example.org/');
// way 1
const hrefs1 = await page.evaluate(
() => Array.from(
document.querySelectorAll('a[href]'),
a => a.getAttribute('href')
)
);
// way 2
const elementHandles = await page.$$('a');
const propertyJsHandles = await Promise.all(
elementHandles.map(handle => handle.getProperty('href'))
);
const hrefs2 = await Promise.all(
propertyJsHandles.map(handle => handle.jsonValue())
);
console.log(hrefs1, hrefs2);
await browser.close();
} catch (err) {
console.error(err);
}
})();

Answer 2

const yourHref = await page.$eval('selector', anchor => anchor.getAttribute('href'));
but if are working with a handle you can
const handle = await page.$('selector');
const yourHref = await page.evaluate(anchor => anchor.getAttribute('href'), handle);

Answer 3

I don't know why it's such a pain, but this was found when I encountered this a while ago.
async function getHrefs(page, selector) {
return await page.$$eval(selector, anchors => [].map.call(anchors, a => a.href));
}

Answer 4

A Type safe way of returning an array of strings as the hrefs of the links by casting using the HTMLLinkElement generic for TypeScript users:
await page.$$eval('a', (anchors) => anchors.map((link) => (link as HTMLLinkElement).href));

Answer 5

A simple way to get an href from an anchor element
Say you fetched an anchor element with the following
const anchorElement = await page.$('a') // or page.$<HTMLAnchorElement>('a') if using typescript
You can get the href property with the following
const href = anchorElement.evaluate(element => element.href)