Why does getting text, val or html from a textarea get the placeholder value when there is no user created text?

Question

Why am I getting the placeholder value for my textarea if I have no text in the element? Shouldn't I just be getting a empty string, and not the placeholder value?

Answer 1

As you can see from the example, it doesn't alert the placeholder-text.

 alert($('textarea').text()); 

 <script src="https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/2.1.1/jquery.min.js"></script> <textarea name="text" placeholder="this is a test"></textarea> 

Answer 2

How are you displaying the placeholder text? Some sources recommend something along the lines of this for placeholder text in a textarea:

<textarea>
PLACEHOLDER CONTENT
</textarea>

If this is the method you are using, the interior content will be treated as the value, not the placeholder. The proper route would be something along these lines:

<textarea placeholder="PLACEHOLDER CONTENT"></textarea>