How to test a placeholder in the text field - selenium-webdriver

Question

I want to verify the placeholder text present in a text field using robotframework.
I have used different Selenium2Library keywords but none of them do precisely what I want.
Does anyone have an approach to getting this functionality from within my test?

Answer 1

You can run the command getAttribute(input_field_locator#placeholder). This will return you the text you want and then you can assert on it.

Answer 2

Once you have managed to access the functionality you are looking for from the REPL, you may find that it is not accessible via robotframework. You can expose new keywords by creating a wrapper for Selenium2Library which extends it with extra functionality - for an example see https://github.com/alistair-broomhead/scalable-robotframework-example/blob/master/TestLibraries/Selenium2Custom from a tutorial I am working on.
This example simply adds two keywords to robotframework on top of those in Selenium2Library if you instead import this class (Get Text and Get HTML, which are useful for verification):
from Selenium2Library import Selenium2Library
class Selenium2Custom(Selenium2Library):
"""
Custom wrapper for robotframework Selenium2Library to add extra functionality
"""
def get_text(self, locator):
"""
Returns the text of element identified by `locator`.
See `introduction` for details about locating elements.
"""
return self._get_text(locator)
def get_html(self, id=None):
"""
Get the current document as an XML accessor object.
"""
from lxml import html
src = self.get_source().encode('ascii', 'xmlcharrefreplace')
page = html.fromstring(src)
element = page.get_element_by_id(id) if id is not None else page
return html.tostring(element)
As such it would be trivial to do something like this:
from Selenium2Library import Selenium2Library
class Selenium2Custom(Selenium2Library):
"""
Custom wrapper for robotframework Selenium2Library to add extra functionality
"""
def get_placeholder(self, locator):
"""
Returns the placeholder text of element identified by `locator`.
"""
element = self._element_find(locator, True, False)
return element.get_attribute("#placeholder")
Now I don't know that this will definately work for you, but for me it works like so:
Python 2.7.3 (v2.7.3:70274d53c1dd, Apr 9 2012, 20:52:43)
[GCC 4.2.1 (Apple Inc. build 5666) (dot 3)] on darwin
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> from Selenium2Library import Selenium2Library
>>> def get_placeholder(self, locator):
... element = self._element_find(locator, True, False)
... return element.get_attribute("placeholder")
...
>>> Selenium2Library.get_placeholder = get_placeholder
>>> session = Selenium2Library()
>>> session.open_browser("http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page",
remote_url="http://127.0.0.1:4444/wd/hub")
1
>>> session.get_placeholder("search")
u'Search'
>>>

Answer 3

I also wanted to check placeholder text and after coming here and reading the comments, I got some clue about it. Now, the tricky part is how to do this in robot framework and after doing some math, I was able to do this pretty easily. Here is my answer in 2 lines:
${webelement}= Get WebElement locator
${placeholder}= Call Method ${webelement} get_attribute placeholder