WebDriver API: 'Failed to send keys because cannot focus element' — better workaround than using Firefox instead of Chrome?

Question

There's a bug in the chromedriver.exe Chrome driver for Selenium's WebDriver API. You can't use send_keys for certain types of inputs, like for the jQuery plugin "EZPZ Hint". It works okay on simple forms.

For now I'm going to use Firefox and IE instead of Chrome to do my testing, but I'd like to see this issue fixed. Does anyone know of a different workaround that'd allow me to use Chrome instead of switching browsers?

Here's are inputs, had to use an image because it's generated dynamically and I couldn't copy/paste from Chrome's inspector thing:

http://i.imgur.com/R68e6.png

I am using Chrome latest stable (14.0.835.202) and a Python script with a unittest class and nose as the test runner.

Here's the debugging info:

Traceback (most recent call last): File "\server\QA\Automation\COMMON\product\common.py", line 35, in setUp self.web.find_element_by_name("ezpz_hint_dummy_input").send_keys(self.user) File "C:\Python27\lib\site-packages\selenium-2.8.1-py2.7.egg\selenium\webdriver\remote\webelement. py", line 146, in send_keys self._execute(Command.SEND_KEYS_TO_ELEMENT, {'value': typing}) File "C:\Python27\lib\site-packages\selenium-2.8.1-py2.7.egg\selenium\webdriver\remote\webelement. py", line 194, in _execute return self._parent.execute(command, params) File "C:\Python27\lib\site-packages\selenium-2.8.1-py2.7.egg\selenium\webdriver\remote\webdriver.p y", line 144, in execute self.error_handler.check_response(response) File "C:\Python27\lib\site-packages\selenium-2.8.1-py2.7.egg\selenium\webdriver\remote\errorhandle r.py", line 118, in check_response raise exception_class(message, screen, stacktrace) WebDriverException: Message: 'Message: u\'focusElement execution failed;\n Failed to send keys beca use cannot focus element\' \n-------------------- >> begin captured logging << --------------------\ nselenium.webdriver.remote.remote_connection: DEBUG: POST http://127.0.0.1:51178/session {"sessionId ": null, "desiredCapabilities": {"platform": "ANY", "browserName": "chrome", "version": "", "javascr iptEnabled": true}}\nselenium.webdriver.remote.remote_connection: DEBUG: POST http://127.0.0.1:51178 /session/c85bcae35e0f07e805ea80c47ed9b75d/url {"url": "http://10.0.20.61/product", "sessionId": "c85bc ae35e0f07e805ea80c47ed9b75d"}\nselenium.webdriver.remote.remote_connection: DEBUG: POST http://127.0 .0.1:51178/session/c85bcae35e0f07e805ea80c47ed9b75d/element {"using": "name", "sessionId": "c85bcae3 5e0f07e805ea80c47ed9b75d", "value": "ezpz_hint_dummy_input"}\nselenium.webdriver.remote.remote_conne ction: DEBUG: POST http://127.0.0.1:51178/session/c85bcae35e0f07e805ea80c47ed9b75d/element/:wdc:1319 220710066/value {"sessionId": "c85bcae35e0f07e805ea80c47ed9b75d", "id": ":wdc:1319220710066", "value ": ["send keys stuff here, redacted"]}\n--------------------- >> end captured logging <<

Answer 1

The error message clearly sounds like sends_keys fails because for some reason it cannot set the focus to the input control prior to sending the actual keys to control. A possible work-around could be to click on the input first because this could possibly set the focus to the input control. Then calling sends_keys afterwards could succeed.

Answer 2

There are a couple things I would try.

• Get a different version of Selenium. I am using Selenium Webdriver 2.9 and can't reproduce the issue on the web sites that I am testing using the chrome driver.
• Use Javascript to set the text of the element directly:

WebElement element = ...; ((JavascriptExecutor) driver).executeScript("arguments[0].setAttribute("value", "Set to this text.");", element);

There may be recommendations to not use javascript directly because this will a) not ensure the element is visible and active first b) not fire any events on the element, which is sometimes required to continue interacting with your page. If it is not required then it shouldn't matter. Unfortunately if you need to fire events such as onkeydown, onkeyup, onchange, etc, I have not found a simple way to do so with Selenium Webdriver.

Answer 3

I just found that whenever you get this error message, it is an issue with the XPath. In Webdriver try to locate the element by its id: webdriverdriver.findElement(By.id("...")) and then use send keys.