selenium webdriver sendkeys() using python and firefox

Question

I am using selenium 2.25.0, firefox 3 and python 2.6.6. I am trying to run a selenium function which uses sendkeys():

 Webdriver.find_element_by_name( 'j_username' ).clear()
 webdriver.find_element_by_name( 'j_username' ).send_keys( "username" )

This code works running from my machine. However running from another machine the username field gets left empty and continues with the rest of the script(without reporting any errors).

I can see that the field is cleared before sending the username is attempted so I know there is not a problem with finding the button/naming of the button. I've tried putting pauses inbetween clearing the field and sending the username but this also doesn't seem to work.

I need to keep my firefox and selenium versions the same, is there anything else I can look at to solve this problem?

I'm guessing that the problem is related to quite old Firefox version and newer Selenium not playing nicely together. Can you try with some more recent Firefox? — Edu
Yep you're right. The reason for the out of date firefox was for upload of large files. I have updated to Firefox 10 and managed to fix my problem with file upload. All seems to be working now. — Sarah92

Corey Goldberg Corey Goldberg · Accepted Answer · 2013-01-28T15:00:31

your code looks odd. typically, you locate an element, and then do actions with it... rather than locating it each time.

try something like this:

from selenium import webdriver

driver = webdriver.Firefox()
elem = driver.find_element_by_name('j_username')
elem.clear()
elem.send_keys('username')

selenium webdriver sendkeys() using python and firefox

3 Answers