Get value of an input box using Selenium (Python)

Question

I am trying to extract the text in an input box,

<input type="text" name="inputbox" value="name" class="box">

I started with

input = driver.find_element_by_name("inputbox")

I tried input.getText() but I got

AttributeError: 'WebElement' object has no attribute 'getText'

Ridotto

Please attach sample html. Thanks. – Sarcasm

does the input really contain text? or you want to get/store value 'name' of the input's attribute 'value'? Because get_text usually gives you this kind of text: <div>some_text</div> – Unimproved

Answer 1

Use this to get the value of the input element:

input.get_attribute('value')

Tragopan

For completeness: input.get_attribute('value').encode('utf-8') – Phylogeny

while input.text does exist, it will not give you the value :( – Pockmark

Answer 2

Note that there's an important difference between the value attribute and the value property.

The simplified explanation is that the value attribute is what's found in the HTML tag and the value property is what you see on the page.

Basically, the value attribute sets the element's initial value, while the value property contains the current value.

You can read more about that here and see an example of the difference here.

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If you want the value attribute, then you should use get_attribute:

input.get_attribute('value')

If you want the value property, then you should use get_property

input.get_property("value")

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Though, according to the docs, get_attribute actually returns the property rather than the attribute, unless the property doesn't exist. get_property will always return the property.

Armelda

Answer 3

Use this to get the value of the input element:

text =driver.find_element('xpath',"/html/body/div[2]/div/div[2]/div[2]/input")
value = text.get_dom_attribute("value")
print(value)

Radiopaque