Java Selenium, how to get linkText (anchor) from link WebElement

Question

I have a WebElement containing link found by url. I can extract url by:

element.getAttribute("href");

But the question is: how to extract it's anchor, I'm trying like this:

webElement.getAttribute("linkText");

It gives me null value. I'm 100% sure this link has an anchor. Is there any way to get anchor ? It's more complicated, but example simplified code could look like this:

WebDriver driver = new FirefoxDriver();
        driver.get("http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/java");
        WebElement link  = driver.findElement(By.linkText("Bicycles"));

        System.out.println(link.getAttribute("href")); // shows http://bicycles.stackexchange.com/
        System.out.println(link.getAttribute("linkText")); // shows null

Answer 1

If getText() returns an empty String, try the innerHTML attribute:

String text = element.getAttribute("innerHTML")

Answer 2

Try this:

System.out.println(link.getText());

Answer 3

By "Anchor" I think you mean the text of the link? If so, then you can use .getText() since an <a> is a block level element.

link.getText();