The getAttribute method can be executed on all the WebElements. Remember, we have seen attributes of WebElement in the WebElements section. The HTML attributes are modifiers of HTML elements. They are generally key-value pairs that appear in the start tag of an element. For example:

  <label name="Username" id="uname">Enter Username: </label>

In the preceding code, name and id are the attributes or attribute keys and Username and uname are the attribute values.

The API syntax of the getAttribute() method is as follows:

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

In the preceding code, the input parameter is String, which is the name of the attribute. The return type is again String, which is the value of the attribute.

Now let's see how we can get all the attributes of a WebElement using WebDriver. Here, we will make use of the Search box from the example application. This is what the element looks like:

<input id="search" type="search" name="q" value="" class="input-text required-entry" maxlength="128" placeholder="Search entire store here..." autocomplete="off">

We will list all the attributes of this WebElement using WebDriver. The code for that is as follows:

@Test
public void elementGetAttributesExample() {
    WebElement searchBox = driver.findElement(By.name("q"));
    System.out.println("Name of the box is: "
            + searchBox.getAttribute("name"));
    System.out.println("Id of the box is: " + searchBox.getAttribute("id"));
    System.out.println("Class of the box is: "
            + searchBox.getAttribute("class"));
    System.out.println("Placeholder of the box is: "
            + searchBox.getAttribute("placeholder"));
}

In the preceding code, the last four lines of code use the getAttribute() method to fetch the attribute values of the name, id, class, and placeholder attributes of the WebElement search box. The output of the preceding code will be following:

 Name of the box is: q
 Id of the box is: search
 Class of the box is: input-text required-entry
 Placeholder of the box is: Search entire store here...

Going back to the By.tagName() method of the previous section, if the search by a locating mechanism, By.tagName, results in more than one result, you can use the getAttribute() method to further filter the results and get to your exact intended element.