How can you use "getAttribute" method of WebDriver in HTML structure?

your first trial,

driver.findElement(By.id("span1")).getAttribute("class");

looks good, did you try printing that ? if yes, did you get proper output or was there any other error ?

your 2nd code trial

driver.findElement.getAttribute(By.id("span1"));

is invalid, since you can not call getAttribute() like that, it should result in compile time error.

Your 3rd code trial :

driver.findElement("value").getAttribute(By.id("span1"));

is again invalid, you can not find the element with a string input.

your 4th code trial :

driver.findElement(By.id("span1")).getAttribute();

is again invalid, since you are not passing anything in getAttribute();

method. It should again result in compile time error.

Below is an alternative way with xpath :

//span[@id='span1']

and get the id or class attribute like this :

String idAttribute = driver.findElement(By.xpath("//span[@id='span1']")).getAttribute("id");
System.out.println(idAttribute)

or to get class attribute you can do something like this :

String classAttribute = driver.findElement(By.xpath("//span[@id='span1']")).getAttribute("class");
    System.out.println(idAttribute)