[🚀 Feature]: deprecate WebElement.getAttribute

[joerg1985]

Feature and motivation

WebElement.getDomAttribute and WebElement.getDomProperty have been added in Selenium 4.

It might be good to deprecate WebElement.getAttribute to remove it at a undefined time in the future.

Usage example

This would warn people to move to the 'new' methods when maintaining existing code.

[github-actions]

@joerg1985, thank you for creating this issue. We will troubleshoot it as soon as we can.

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Thank you!

[titusfortner]

Bold.

I'm not completely against the idea, but also not sure it's the right call.

[NCLnclNCL]

Feature and motivation

WebElement.getDomAttribute and WebElement.getDomProperty have been added in Selenium 4.

It might be good to deprecate WebElement.getAttribute to remove it at a undefined time in the future.

Usage example

This would warn people to move to the 'new' methods when maintaining existing code.

Let me ask, are the 3 APIs above different?

[titusfortner]

getAttribute() assumes that people don't know the difference between a property and an attribute and don't want to be bothered to figure it out (a decent assumption), so it uses a bunch of fancy JavaScript that does a pretty good job of guessing whether the user is looking for the property or the attribute and returning that value. It's great convenience, but it is now implemented with a client side atom which means a large payload gets sent to the driver/server on every usage.

The ideal world people figure out if they want an attribute or property and use the correct method. But that might be asking a lot of users, and we already have the code right there...

[joerg1985]

I was reading the blog post and the javadoc before opening the issue, this gave me the feeling the getAttribute method is the legacy way of reading attributes/properties.

If this is not true and there are no plans to ever remove the getAttribute method, this issue can be closed.

If this is a legacy method, it might be good to mark it deprecated or make a clear statement in the docs to ensure no new code is using this.
I agree there is alot of code using this, therefore a deprecation notice could be added, something like:
don't panic, this method will not be removed before selenium 6, but should not be used in new code.

[titusfortner]

It would definitely be valuable to encourage people to use the other methods.

[titusfortner]

We decided in TLC Meeting 1/18 that we would go ahead and mark this feature deprecated to encourage people to move to the more precise property and attribute methods.

We need a blog post explaining everything though, and I'm still not sure we want to actually remove it any time soon because it is quite useful.

[github-actions]

This issue is stale because it has been open 280 days with no activity. Remove stale label or comment or this will be closed in 14 days.

[Delta456]

We decided in TLC Meeting 1/18 that we would go ahead and mark this feature deprecated to encourage people to move to the more precise property and attribute methods.

We need a blog post explaining everything though, and I'm still not sure we want to actually remove it any time soon because it is quite useful.

Are we still doing this?

[joerg1985]

I hope so, i think this is still a valid point.

[Delta456]

I can make a PR to deprecate WebElement.getAttribute and also help with the blog post if required.

[diemol]

It is still valid, just that no one has worked on it. Thank you for offering, @Delta456!

[Delta456]

I will PR the deprecation but for the blog I will need your help @diemol and others.

[joerg1985]

I just noticed something strage, which is probably the root for having getAttribute.
When an element is modified via javascript, e.g. call e.multiple=true on a <select>.
The getDomProperty changes, but getDomAttribute will stay null.
So client code should allways first check getDomProperty and then getDomAttribute.

This is a important point to the blog post in my mind.

[Delta456]

Across all language bindings the method has been deprecated. We now need to work on a blog post. I am up to volunteer for this.

[diemol]

If we are now going to ask users to do this #13334 (comment), then I think I am changing my mind, even if it was a TLC decision. We should be helping users and not asking them to do more. I am not sure what the real benefit of getting rid of this method is.

[canon-cmre-benoit-lecardonnel]

Is there a blog post explaining how to migrate from getAttribute? We're now getting deprecation warnings, but I'm not sure what the difference between an attribute and a property is.
The Javadoc points to e.g. https://w3c.github.io/webdriver/#get-element-attribute, but that does not list usual property and attribute names.
Does #13334 (comment) mean that we should now call both and choose the first one that does not return null?