I am working on nighwatch.js for web ui testing, I want to set value to a textarea, and textarea has an attribute which has my actual text, I am writing full textarea and how I am setting in following.

<div class="textarea-description">
    <textarea cols="50" class="myClass setText" data-def placeholder="text to be replaced using nightwatch"/>
</div>

I am trying to set value in above textarea's attribute data-def placeholder as following ways

browser.setValue('.textarea-description textarea[type=text]','nightwatch'); or
browser.setValue('.textarea-description textarea[data-def placeholder=text]','nightwatch'); or
browser.setValue('.textarea-description textarea[type=data-def placeholder]','nightwatch');

but nothing is working.

I am working on nighwatch.js for web ui testing, I want to set value to a textarea, and textarea has an attribute which has my actual text, I am writing full textarea and how I am setting in following.

<div class="textarea-description">
    <textarea cols="50" class="myClass setText" data-def placeholder="text to be replaced using nightwatch"/>
</div>

I am trying to set value in above textarea's attribute data-def placeholder as following ways

browser.setValue('.textarea-description textarea[type=text]','nightwatch'); or
browser.setValue('.textarea-description textarea[data-def placeholder=text]','nightwatch'); or
browser.setValue('.textarea-description textarea[type=data-def placeholder]','nightwatch');

but nothing is working.

• javascript
• jquery
• ui-automation
• ui-testing
• nightwatch.js

4 Answers 4

This might not be the best solution but it works:

browser
.execute("document.querySelector('.textarea-description .myClass').setAttribute('placeholder', 'nightwatch');")

If you have jQuery you can make it a bit nicer:

browser
.execute("$('.textarea-description .myClass').attr('placeholder', 'nightwatch');")

Thank you for your all valuable suggestions, all suggestions provided by you was able to give good knowledge but unfortunately none of the suggestion worked. I have resolved it by using following.

client.setValue('.textarea-description textarea','new text to be write.');

Actually attribute "data-def placeholder" was using only watermark that was not actual text, so it is working.

You could use xpath to get the attribute.

.useXpath().setValue('//textarea[contains(@placeholder,'text to be replaced using nightwatch')]@placeholder', 'nightwatch')

How to select specified node within Xpath node sets by index with Selenium?

This worked for me.

.assert.visible('div.textarea-description textarea.setText')
.moveToElement('div.textarea-description textarea.setText', null, null)
.mouseButtonClick('left')
.keys([browser.Keys.CONTROL, "a"])
.keys([browser.Keys.CONTROL, "nightwatch"])