Cannot read current value from a textarea

[geb-bot]

Originally created by Eric Sword.

I hit the problem talked about in this thread - http://markmail.org/thread/h7assdeska6cc7ml - and I think the conclusion that it is caused by a WebDriver bug is wrong. According to the selenium documentation for WebElement:

java.lang.String getAttribute(java.lang.String name)

Get the value of a the given attribute of the element. Will return the current value, even if this has been modified after the page has been loaded. More exactly, this method will return the value of the given attribute, ====>>> unless that attribute is not present, in which case the value of the property with the same name is returned <<<====

The confusion was highlighted by this selenium bug that was filed against the documentation:

http://code.google.com/p/selenium/issues/detail?id=2443

I think the proper thing to do is to update NonEmptyNavigator.getValue to be:

private getValue(WebElement input) {
    if (input == null) {
        return null
    }

    input.getAttribute('value')
}

I just tried calling nav.firstElement().getAttribute('value') for a textarea object and it worked as documented.

[geb-bot]

Resolved