send_keys to hidden elements

Question

I want to send a text to a text box of a page.

Here is hidden element on page:

<textarea class="chatterTopicsEnabled groupAtMentionsEnabled publishertextarea" 
  id="publishereditablearea" 
  name="publishereditablearea" 
  role="textbox" tabindex="0" 
  title="Topics" type="text" wrap="soft" 
  data-uidsfdc="112" style="height: 208px;">Topics</textarea>
<input type="hidden" id="publisherprompttext" name="publisherprompttext" value="Topics">

My code by which i can click the text box but can do nothing to send text:

textbox = [tag for tag in driver.find_elements_by_tag_name('textarea') 
           if tag.get_attribute('name') == 'publishereditablearea']
textbox[0].click()
textbox[0].send_keys("text")

The error message said: element not visible.

How can I send a text to the textbox?

Did you try to find by ID `publishereditablearea`? What operation goes wrong, `click` or `send_keys`? — Pax Vobiscum, Nov 22 '17 at 12:03
selenium doesn't interact with hidden element. you application should enable that element to interact. are you able to do it manually? — Murthi, Nov 22 '17 at 12:04
You could use JavaScript. But it might not be a good idea to do so in a testing context. There should be a good reason, why this element is hidden and executing a test case which is not doing what a real user could do is questionable. — Würgspaß, Nov 22 '17 at 12:06
Was my answer useful? If yes -- check a tick near my answer, please. — Ratmir Asanov, Nov 23 '17 at 09:55
@Rloqvist, yes, i have tried ID and xpath, but it does not work. — potatout, Nov 23 '17 at 15:02
@RatmirAsanov, Thank you, I will try your solution and give my feedback — potatout, Nov 23 '17 at 15:04

score 2 · Answer 1 · answered Nov 22 '17 at 13:39

2

Use like this using execute_script as your element is hidden

element=driver.find_element_by_id("publishereditablearea") 
driver.execute_script("arguments[0].click();", element)

answered Nov 22 '17 at 13:39

iamsankalp89

4,607
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1

Thank you, after click action, how to send value to the text box? – potatout Nov 24 '17 at 02:39

Ratmir Asanov · Answer 2 · 2017-12-10T10:02:45.017

1

Try the following (it must work):

js = "document.getElementById('publishereditablearea').value = 'text';"
driver.execute_script(js)

edited Dec 10 '17 at 10:02

answered Nov 22 '17 at 12:16

Ratmir Asanov

6,237
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hi, i have tried this code on my end, but it does not work well. The text has not been inserted into text box. – potatout Nov 24 '17 at 03:29
@YamPakChing, any other error message? Because it's working for me. – Ratmir Asanov Nov 24 '17 at 10:27
There is no error for this code, but no output came from this code. and i have added new code of html. i am sure i could click the text box but do nothing for sending text – potatout Nov 24 '17 at 10:41
@YamPakChing, after my code you need to save your results. Is this not working? – Ratmir Asanov Dec 31 '17 at 11:25
@YamPakChing, also you can try like this: `js = "document.getElementById('publishereditablearea').innerHTML = 'text';"`. Let me know about results. – Ratmir Asanov Dec 31 '17 at 11:28

send_keys to hidden elements

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