How do I access the text input value in selenium webdriver mocha tests

Question

Need help testing user interactions with mocha selenium webdriver. No idea where to find what the correct method is to get value of text input. Tried various variations on getAttribute(), getText etc. Get the same error:

TypeError: Object [object object] has no method 'getElementText'

Here is my code:

var assert = require('assert'),
    fs = require('fs');

var webdriver = require('../node_modules/selenium-webdriver'),
    test = require('../node_modules/selenium-webdriver/testing'),
    remote = require('../node_modules/selenium-webdriver/remote');


test.describe('Google Search', function() {
  var driver;

  this.timeout(60000);

  test.before(function() {
    driver = new webdriver.Builder().
        withCapabilities(webdriver.Capabilities.chrome()).
        build();
  });

  test.it('should append query to title', function() {

    //setTimeout(done, 60000);

    driver.get('http://localhost:8080/devanagariTextField/index.html');

    driver.findElement(webdriver.By.id('textbox')).sendKeys('gaa');
    //driver.findElement(webdriver.By.name('btnG')).click();
    driver.wait(function() {
      return driver.getElementText('value').then(function(text) {
        console.log('TEXT: ' + text)
        return 'गा' === text;
      });
    }, 1000);
  });

  //test.after(function() { driver.quit(); });
});

Answer 1

You need to perform the getText/getAttribute call on the element, not the driver object

var myTextBox = driver.findElement(webdriver.By.id('textbox'));
myTextBox.sendKeys('gaa');

//You will probably want to use getAttribute()
var elementContent = myTextBox.getText();
var elementValue = myTextBox.getAttribute("value");

Answer 2

This is what worked for me in the end. I needed to use the .then() function after the sendKeys() call and then return the value attribute at that point. Steve's answer was helpful but I came to this by playing around with an example set up on git hub called selenium-mocha-chai-saucelabs.

    describe('textbox value', function (done) {
    it('is expected to equal ka when keys ka are sent', function (done) {
        driver.findElement(webdriver.By.id("textbox"))
          .sendKeys("ka")
          .then(function(){
            return driver.findElement(webdriver.By.id("textbox")).getAttribute("value");
          })
          .then(function (value) {
              expect(value).to.equal('ka');
              done();
          });
    });
});