[java] What is the difference between getText() and getAttribute() in Selenium WebDriver?

Both are used to get the WebElement value in between tags.

Is my assumption right? If wrong, please elaborate.

<img src="w3schools.jpg" alt="W3Schools.com" width="104" height="142">

In above html tag we have different attributes like src, alt, width and height.

If you want to get the any attribute value from above html tag you have to pass attribute value in getAttribute() method

Syntax:

getAttribute(attributeValue)
getAttribute(src) you get w3schools.jpg
getAttribute(height) you get 142
getAttribute(width) you get 104 

getAttribute() -> It fetches the text that contains one of any attribute in the HTML tag. Suppose there is an HTML tag like

<input name="Name Locator" value="selenium">Hello</input>

Now getAttribute() fetches the data of the attribute of 'value', which is "Selenium".

Returns:

The attribute's current value or null if the value is not set.

driver.findElement(By.name("Name Locator")).getAttribute("value")  //

The field value is retrieved by the getAttribute("value") Selenium WebDriver predefined method and assigned to the String object.

getText() -> delivers the innerText of a WebElement. Get the visible (i.e. not hidden by CSS) innerText of this element, including sub-elements, without any leading or trailing whitespace.

Returns:

The innerText of this element.

driver.findElement(By.name("Name Locator")).getText();

'Hello' will appear

getText(): Get the visible (i.e. not hidden by CSS) innerText of this element, including sub-elements, without any leading or trailing whitespace.

getAttribute(String attrName): 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 (for example for the "value" property of a textarea element). If neither value is set, null is returned. The "style" attribute is converted as best can be to a text representation with a trailing semi-colon. The following are deemed to be "boolean" attributes, and will return either "true" or null: async, autofocus, autoplay, checked, compact, complete, controls, declare, defaultchecked, defaultselected, defer, disabled, draggable, ended, formnovalidate, hidden, indeterminate, iscontenteditable, ismap, itemscope, loop, multiple, muted, nohref, noresize, noshade, novalidate, nowrap, open, paused, pubdate, readonly, required, reversed, scoped, seamless, seeking, selected, spellcheck, truespeed, willvalidate Finally, the following commonly mis-capitalized attribute/property names are evaluated as expected: "class" "readonly"

getText() return the visible text of the element.

getAttribute(String attrName) returns the value of the attribute passed as parameter.