Using Selenium WebDriver to retrieve the value of an HTML input

Question

In the HTML of a web application there is the following code:

<input type="text" name="prettyTime" id="prettyTime" class="ui-state-disabled prettyTime"  readonly="readonly">

A string displaying the time is actually shown on the page.

In Selenium WebDriver, I have a WebElement object referring to the <input> using:

WebElement timeStamp = waitForElement(By.id("prettyTime"));

I want to get the value of the WebElement, or, in other words, what is printed on the page. I tried all the WebElement getters and nothing has been retrieving the actual value that the user sees.

Clint

Answer 1

This is kind of hacky, but it works.

I used JavascriptExecutor and added a div to the HTML, and changed the text in the div to $('#prettyTime').val()

I then used Selenium to retrieve the div and grab its value. After testing the correctness of the value, I removed the div that was just created.

Clint

This shouldn't be the accepted answer. Even if using JS, you can just execute and return that (instead of messing with the DOM). – Pavlodar

Answer 2

Try element.getAttribute("value")

The text property is for text within the tags of an element. For input elements, the displayed text is not wrapped by the <input> tag, instead it's inside the value attribute.

Note: Case matters. If you specify "Value", you'll get a 'null' value back. This is true for C# at least.

Mccutcheon

getAttribute("value") is really how you do this?! That doesn't make any sense. There's a big difference between the value attribute of an input element and its value property. Does Selenium do the horrible thing jQuery does and conflate them? – Stanch

That's what I've bumped into right now: trying to get a value from a textarea, which is neither a "value" attribute, nor a between-tag text (set dynamically as "value" attribute. – Vesical

Well, it turns out that if the attribute is missing, it will try to get the corresponding property. So you can take a "value" from a textarea. – Vesical

Apparently, this is the only way I managed to access angulat material form fields – Kwasi

For javascript users, don't forget the await when using getAttribute. – Heat

In Python, it would be get_attribute (with an underscore and all lowercase), not getAttribute (yes, this question is tagged with Java). – Heredity

In C#, it is GetAttribute (capital "G"), not getAttribute. – Heredity

As this is very confusing, with different names for Java, Python, C#, Ruby, JavaScript, and Kotlin, perhaps list the different names in the answer? Or at least make it very clear that "getAttribute" is only for Java (and happens to be the same for JavaScript and Kotlin). – Heredity

Answer 3

You can do it like this:

webelement time = driver.findElement(By.id("input_name")).getAttribute("value");

This will give you the time displaying on the webpage.

Chaunceychaunt

Answer 4

For Python bindings it will be:

element.get_attribute('value')

Adopt

This is only answer that works for me! on Mac OSX + Python 3.7.7 – Sylph

In Ruby this is element['value'] – Biogeography

Answer 5

With Selenium 2, I usually write it like this:

WebElement element = driver.findElement(By.id("input_name"));
String elementval = element.getAttribute("value");

Or

String elementval = driver.findElement(By.id("input_name")).getAttribute("value");

Hinkel

Answer 6

As was mentioned before, you could do something like this:

public String getVal(WebElement webElement) {
    JavascriptExecutor e = (JavascriptExecutor) driver;
    return (String) e.executeScript(String.format("return $('#%s').val();", webElement.getAttribute("id")));
}

But as you can see, your element must have an id attribute, and also, jQuery on your page.

Girder

Answer 7

Following ragzzy's answer, I use

public static string Value(this IWebElement element,
                           IJavaScriptExecutor javaScriptExecutor)
{
    try
    {
        string value = javaScriptExecutor.ExecuteScript("return arguments[0].value", element) as string;
        return value;
    }
    catch (Exception)
    {
        return null;
    }
}

It works quite well and does not alter the DOM.

Possession

Answer 8

Use

element.GetAttribute("value");

Even though if you don't see the "value" attribute in the HTML DOM, you will get the field value displayed in the GUI.

Anglophile

Answer 9

If the input value gets populated by a script that has some latency involved (e.g. AJAX call) then you need to wait until the input has been populated. E.g.

var w = new WebDriverWait(WebBrowser, TimeSpan.FromSeconds(10));
            w.Until((d) => {
                // Wait until the input has a value...

                var elements = d.FindElements(By.Name(name));

                var ele = elements.SingleOrDefault();

                if (ele != null)
                {
                    // Found a single element

                    if (ele.GetAttribute("value") != "")
                    {
                        // We have a value now
                        return true;
                    }
                }

                return false;
                });

        var e = WebBrowser.Current.FindElement(By.Name(name));

        if (e.GetAttribute("value") != value)
        {
            Assert.Fail("Result contains a field named '{0}', but its value is '{1}', not '{2}' as expected", name, e.GetAttribute("value"), value);
        }

Frig

Answer 10

Java users:

To get what is printed on the page, we need to use the getText() method.

getText() method

The getText() method returns the visible inner text of a web element.

getAttribute() method

On the other hand, the getAttribute() method fetches the value of the attribute we wish to retrieve.

Example:

<input name="Title" type="text" value="LambdaTest" /> Welcome to LambdaTest </input>

getText()

driver.findElement(By.name("Title")).getText();

Output of above code => Welcome to LambdaTest

getAttribute():

1. driver.findElement(By.name("Title")).getAttribute("value");

   Output of above code => LambdaTest

2. driver.findElement(By.name("Title")).getAttribute("type");

   Output of above code => text

Source: Difference between getText() And getAttribute() in Selenium WebDriver

Weswesa

<input /> is invalid in html, and same for <input> Welcome to LambdaTest </input>. Input is a self closing tag that is not allowed to have any child. – Multiplication

Answer 11

It works for me in java code:

@FindBy(how = How.XPATH, using = "//input[@formcontrolname='name']")
private WebElement name;

try {
      JavascriptExecutor jse;
      String value = (String)jse.executeScript("return arguments[0].value", name);
      return value;
    } catch(Exception ex) {
      return "";
    }

Grave