Robot Framework - Locating input element with accept attribute fails

Question

I am writing an automation script for an avatar upload module with the following CSS locator:

input[accept="image/png,image/jpeg,image/gif,image/bmp"]

I am using Robot Framework's Wait Until Element Is Visible keyword to look for the locator above but is unsuccessful with the error:

Element 'css=input[accept="image/png,image/jpeg,image/gif,image/bmp"]' not visible after 30 seconds.

Increasing the timeout also doesn't work. Using the same in Chrome Dev Tools would successfully find the element. My guess is that the commas/slashes are messing with Robot's locator parsing. My question is: What is the correct way to write the locator?

The content of the locator is used as is, RF doesn't have any issues with the commas or the slashes. It should be something else - the element is shown after some interaction, or it is simply not visible, just present - a more "stylized" span or div is what the user sees. Try with Page Should Contain Element. — Todor Minakov
@Todor I changed the validation to use the keyword Wait Until Page Contains Element and it worked! It looks like Selenium/Robot recognizes input tags that are not text fields as not visible even though they appear in the DOM. — jeffsia

Todor Minakov Todor Minakov · Accepted Answer · 2018-11-20T05:52:28

Though present in the DOM, an element may not be visible/rendered. This is very often the case with file upload input elements - the UI renders something different, a button, div that had applied styling and fits in better with the overall design.

Thus a check is it visible will rightfully fail. Change your pre-usage approach to validate the input is in the HTML - this is actually the same as what you did in the browser's dev tools - with the Page Should Contain Element keyword, and proceed on success.

Robot Framework - Locating input element with accept attribute fails

2 Answers