put a string with html/Javascript into selenium webdriver

Question

I have a html document in memory as a string. It contains a <script> tag with a little script that manipulates the dom. I now want to load that html page into selenium webdriver and get back the page after the script manipulates it. Since I have the html already in memory, I don't like the idea much of writing the html into a file and load it as file with driver.get("file://path/to/file"). So the question is, if there is a possibility to achieve what I want.

IF webdriver can't do it, maybe there is a possibility other than that?

Here comes an example:

<html><head>
<script type="text/javascript">
function fill(){
    var i = "secret"
    document.forms[0].elements[1].value=i
}
</script>
</head><body onload="fill()">
<form method="POST"><input type="hidden" name="he1" value="">
<input type="hidden" name="he2" value="">
</form></body></html>

Obviously, I want the webdriver to perform the dom manipulation and change the form according to the script.

Note this is just an example. The actual script I need to run does much more complicated things.

score 43 · Answer 1 · answered Sep 25 '18 at 12:39

43

If you don't want to create a file or load a URL before being able to replace the content of the page, you can always leverage the Data URLs feature, which supports HTML, CSS and JavaScript:

ChromeDriver driver = new ChromeDriver();
html_content = """
<html>
     <head></head>
     <body>
         <div>
             Hello World =)
         </div>
     </body>
</html>
"""

driver.get("data:text/html;charset=utf-8," + html_content)

answered Sep 25 '18 at 12:39

jolancornevin

999
1
9
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1

So cool! After >4 years, finally comes someone with an answer that is doing the trick! Thanks :) – luksch Jun 07 '19 at 07:50
1

Javascript won't run. – Fan Jin Jul 13 '20 at 06:12
I did not verify that this works. Could you elaborate Fan Jin? – luksch Dec 25 '20 at 17:08
2

This is very smart! And answering the other questions here, it fails because if you have any special characters like a ' it will break. The base64'd version from @moyang fixes this. – pojda Dec 29 '20 at 02:23

score 21 · Answer 2 · answered Mar 20 '14 at 16:12

21

You could load an empty page eg:

<html></html>

And then set it's innerHTML

ChromeDriver driver = new ChromeDriver();
driver.get("file://empty-page.html");
String innerHtml = "<head>...</head><body onload="...">...</body>";
driver.executeScript("document.innerHTML = " + innerHtml);

Then fire the load event on the body

driver.executeScript("$(document.body).trigger('load');");

Then get the resultant HTML

String result = driver.executeScript("document.body.innerHTML;");

answered Mar 20 '14 at 16:12

lance-java

25,497
4
59
101

awesome... great idea. I will try it asap. – luksch Mar 20 '14 at 16:15
This isn't guaranteed to work with IE. IE gets very emotional with local HTML files and throws it's toys out of the pram (because of it's security zones, there is a specific zone for local sites) – Arran Mar 20 '14 at 16:23
18

IE has one purpose... to download chrome ;) – lance-java Mar 20 '14 at 16:30
1

It did not work - I now write the file and read it again. That works at least – luksch Mar 20 '14 at 17:34
4

All modern browsers support the about:blank URI schema. Just call `driver.get('about:blank');` to load an empty HTML page. – Kenneth Baltrinic May 01 '14 at 15:52

score 19 · Accepted Answer · answered Dec 25 '20 at 08:24

19

this code can load any html string which include js and css.

html_bs64 = base64.b64encode(innerHtml.encode('utf-8')).decode()
driver.get("data:text/html;base64," + html_bs64)

answered Dec 25 '20 at 08:24

moyang

206
2
2

Thanks for answering. I can't test this at the moment. It looks similar to the solution that jolancornevin suggested in his answer 2 years ago. Anyone reading this and feels inclined to test it out, please report if this actually executes the Javascript as intended. – luksch Dec 25 '20 at 17:06
1

Hey @luksch I just tested and it indeed works, and better than the previous answer. – pojda Dec 29 '20 at 02:23

score 6 · Answer 4 · answered Dec 29 '14 at 12:14

Using Java Selenium 2.4.2 I use the following to replace inner html of an existing element. I use the Apache StringEscapeUtils.escapeJavaScript to escape the HTML because this is a JavaScript replace of the inner html.

    public void replaceHTML(By by, String html) {
      WebElement e = driver.findElement(by);
      ((JavascriptExecutor) driver).executeScript("arguments[0].innerHTML='" + StringEscapeUtils.escapeJavaScript(html) + "'", e);
    }

Example html String I passed in.

<button type="button" onclick="alert('Hello world!')">Click Me!</button>

Notes:

I couldn't get "Lance Java's" approach to work because of invalid escaped characters. Adding a single quote after the equal sign fixed this problem.
I tested "Kenneth Baltrinic's" suggestion of using driver.get('about:blank'); but I wasn't able to write to the screen interacting with the base document. In java I had to use double quotes driver.get("about:blank"). I tested this with Chrome.

I will test this. Thanks for the late response. – luksch Dec 29 '14 at 12:37 — luksch, Dec 29 '14 at 12:37

score 3 · Answer 5 · answered May 10 '15 at 03:33

Just a small update: escapeEcmaScrip() replaces escapeJavaScript() in 2015.

public static void main(String[] args) throws InterruptedException{ 
    driver = new FirefoxDriver();
    driver.get("http://dhtmlx.com/docs/products/dhtmlxTree/");
    replaceHTML(By.xpath("//*/span[text()='Supported browsers:']"), "<button type=\"button\"  onclick=\"alert('Hello World!!')\">Click Me!</button>");
}

 private static void replaceHTML(By by, String html) {
      WebElement e = driver.findElement(by);
     ((JavascriptExecutor) driver).executeScript("arguments[0].innerHTML='" + StringEscapeUtils.escapeEcmaScript(html) + "'", e);

}

score 1 · Answer 6 · answered Mar 20 '14 at 16:28

1

You could fire up jetty embedded. The jetty instance could then serve in memory html strings as web pages via a Servlet / Handler.

answered Mar 20 '14 at 16:28

lance-java

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11

there is no kill like overkill :) – luksch Mar 20 '14 at 17:35

put a string with html/Javascript into selenium webdriver

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