St.text_input will only return an emptystring after an st.rerun, until another re-run

Using Streamlit
, ,
1

I am running this app locally:

import streamlit as st


st.button("A button that should do nothing!")


#######################################################################
st.divider()


# Something unrelated to my things:
text1 = st.text_input("Text1")
st.write(f"Doing something with: >{text1}<")


#######################################################################
st.divider()


# st.rerun example use case
if 'my_things' not in st.session_state:
    st.session_state.my_things = []

st.write("My things:")
for thing_name in st.session_state.my_things:
    st.write(thing_name)

if st.button("Create thing"):
    st.session_state.my_things.append("Thing-string!")
    st.rerun() # Rerun to display thing!


#######################################################################
st.divider()


# Something unrelated to my things:
text2 = st.text_input("Text2")
st.write(f"Doing something with: >{text2}<")

Python 3.12.3, Streamlit 1.33.0

In this script, I have 2 text_inputs, one above the st.rerun and one below it.

If I enter “hello world” into both boxes, I immediately see it on the output. But if I press the “Create thing” button, the script re-runs, the first text remains as expected, but the second text becomes an empty string. Now it obviously displays the second text_input and the written text, so it’s run, but for some reason it seems to return an empty string instead of the input text. A simple rerun, such as the pressing the top button is enough to run the entire script and display the text correctly again. The top text is unaffected, as expected.

I am trying to wrap my head around this. Is this expected functionality? Why does this happen? Thanks