Getting current text of input field using Selenium

Question

Let's say I have this input element:

<input id="email" value="[email protected]">

I execute this piece of code:

var emailInputField = driver.FindElement(By.Id(email));
var email = emailInputField.GetAttribute("value");
emailInputField .InputField.Clear();
var empty = emailInputField.GetAttribute("value");

I would expect variable empty to be empty but it contains same text as email since I cleared the text. I realize that value attribute doesn't get synchronized with entered text, so my question is, how do I find out what text currently is in the text box?

Answer 1

Because you have already selected the element and assigned emailInputField to it then empty is going to refer to that. If you re-assign emailInputField after the clear and then get the value it should be empty. So :

var emailInputField = driver.FindElement(By.Id(email));
var email = emailInputField.GetAttribute("value");
emailInputField .InputField.Clear();
var empty = driver.FindElement(By.Id(email)).GetAttribute("value");