How can I retrive the current text in a textbox if I have not yet saved

Question

How can I get the current input of a textbox on a page without saving the information, e.g if i want to edit something without saving, how can I verify my input String is entered into the textbox

N.B I am not allowed to save the form in this scenario. The problem is getText(); against the box will just return an empty string because this must be essentially the saved value, but I haven't saved yet.

    public boolean checkTextBoxMaxLength(String Textbox, int maxLength) {
    int overMaxLength = maxLength + 1;
        char[] chars = "abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz".toCharArray();
        StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
        Random random = new Random();
        for (int i = 0; i < overMaxLength; i++) {
            char c = chars[random.nextInt(chars.length)];
            sb.append(c);
        }
    String output = sb.toString();
    System.out.println(output);

    WebElement ele = driver.findElement(By.id(Textbox));
    ele.clear();

    ele = driver.findElement(By.id(Textbox));
    String maximum = ele.getAttribute("maxlength");
    System.out.println("Element maxlenght is: " +maximum);

    ele.sendKeys(output);
    String input = ele.getText();

    if (input.equals(output.substring(0,output.length()-1))) {  
    return true;
} else {
    return false;
}
}

In the above scenario, input will always equal " " as nothing has been saved, is there a simple solution to get the text as it currently exists pre-save?

Answer 1

Its not returning an empty value because it is not saved, but because the input field does not have a text it has a value instead.

Try element.getAttribute("value")

Also check for alternatives: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/7852287/using-selenium-web-driver-to-retrieve-value-of-a-html-input