What I do is
And he enters a search term "<rate>"
And in the .py
@when('he enters a search term "(.*)"')
def step_he_enters_searchterm(context,text):
context.driver.find_element_by_id("cludoquery").send_keys(text)
This uses regex to find the variable, and it assigns that variable to text.
Make sure that you place this at the top of your .py so that you can use the regex.
use_step_matcher('re')