As pointed out, the getText() method gets the CDATA between the open and
close tag. For example, given <b>text</b> the getText() would get the
"text" string. If you look at the the input tag you should see something
like: <input id="foo" value="text"/>. There is no CDATA and therefore the
getText() will return nothing.
Personally, I choice to use WebDriver and not fall back on Selenium. The
getAttribute() method can be used to get the value of an input tag, e.g.
WebElement we = driver.findElement(
By.id("foo"));
String value = we.getAttribute("value");