unable to enter the value second time in same text field in C# selenium

Question

I entered one value in text field, using this code

driver.findelement(By.Id("Text"+Keys.enter));

Then, I used same id to enter second value in same text field

driver.findelement(By.id("Text2"+Keys.enter));

I think this is not the correct way to enter second value. Can I get an alternate way to do this? please!

Answer 1

So, time for some Selenium basics. I will try and be thorough so others can use this as time goes by.

When learning Selenium and Development it is important to understand what a method is doing. It's important to understand what you're code is doing. Let's assume you have you're WebDriver up and running and that you are in a place to actually call methods on it.

IWebDriver

1. GoToUrl

   • This method navigates the browser to a URL. Pretty simple.

     IWebDriver driver = new InternetExplorerDriver();
     driver.Navigate().GoToUrl("www.google.com");
     

2. FindElement

   • This method finds a single element on the current page.
   • If there is more than one matching element it will return the first element.
   • Returns an instance of IWebElement.

   • If no elements are found, throws an exception

     IWebElement searchField = driver.FindElement(By.Name("q"));
     

3. FindElements

   • Much like FindElement but returns multiple IWebElement
   • Returns as an IList<IWebElement>

   • Does not throw an exception if no matching Elements

     IList<IWebElement> elements = driver.FindElements(By.Name("q"));
     

By

1. Allows a user to search for elements
   • By.ClassName finds the element by it's class
   • By.CssSelector uses a CSS selector to find it. I typically use this method when ID is not available
   • By.LinkText uses the text of a Link
   • By.Name uses the Name of the element
   • By.PartialLinkText uses a partial match of a link text
   • By.TagName uses a match based on the HTML tag
   • By.XPath uses an XPath matcher

IWebElement

1. SendKeys

   • Sends keys into the element.

     searchField.SendKeys("Selenium Tutorial");
     

2. Clear

   • Clears out the text in the field

     searchField.Clear();
     

3. Click

   • Clicks on the element

     searchField.Click();
     

And to compile together to do something:

IWebDriver driver = new InternetExplorerDriver();
driver.Navigate().GoToUrl("www.google.com");
IWebElement searchField = driver.FindElement(By.Name("q"));
searchField.SendKeys("Testing");
searchField.Clear();
searchField.SendKeys("Selenium Tutorial");
searchField.Submit();

Answer 2

driver.findelement(By.Id("Text"+Keys.enter));

This piece of code is finding the element on the page with an ID of "text" + Keys.enter (whatever Keys.enter translates to in the compiler).

This line of code Does Not enter text into the text attribute of the element. You need to first Find the element, then send the value to the element, something like this

var element = driver.FindElement(By.Id("ElementID"));
element.SendKeys("text" + Keys.enter);

Or you can do it all in one line without assigning the element to a variable.

driver.FindElement(By.Id("ElementID")).SendKeys("text" + Keys.enter);

You can do it like this the first time. If you want to replace what is in the textbox then you need to do something different.

When I want to replace the text I could figure out how to delete what I know is in there, but that could turn ugly, so instead I make use of the Driver's ExecuteScript method like this

var element = driver.FindElement(By.Id("ElementID"));
var text = "text you want in your element's value attribute";
driver.ExecuteScript("arguments[0].setAttribute('value', arguments[1])", element, text);

The FindElement method just returns an IWebElement based on the search parameters that you give it.

I don't think that you want to find the element with the ID of "text" + Keys.enter, Keys.enter returns a key code for the enter key, not a function or an action.

---

You are not grabbing the same element. you are giving each command a different ID so they are looking for two different elements.

the first line

driver.findelement(By.Id("Text"+Keys.enter));

has a different ID than the second line

driver.findelement(By.id("Text2"+Keys.enter));

so when you put these into a variable they are actually two different elements

var firstElement = driver.FindElement(By.Id("id1"));
var secondElement = driver.FindElement(By.Id("id2"));
var areElementsTheSame = firstElement == secondElement;

areElementsTheSame is false.

you haven't put anything into any text field on the page when you run either line of code that you have posted, that is a different operation.