Uploading file using Python Selenium System via system window

Question

I am taking a trial website case to learn to upload files using Python Selenium where the upload window is not a part of the HTML. The upload window is a system level update. This is already solved using JAVA (stackoverflow link(s) below). If this is not possible via Python then I intent to shift to JAVA for this task.

BUT,

Dear all my fellow Python lovers, why shouldn't it be possible using Python webdriver-Selenium. Hence this quest.

Solved in JAVA for URL: http://www.zamzar.com/ Solution (& JAVA code) in stackoverflow: How to handle windows file upload using Selenium WebDriver?

This is my Python code that should be self explanatory, inclusive of chrome webdriver download links.

Task (uploading file) I am trying in brief: Website: https://www.wordtopdf.com/

Note_1: I don't need this tool for any work as there are far better packages to do this word to pdf conversion. Instead, this is just for learning & polishing Python Selenium code/application.

Note_2: You will have to painstakingly enter 2 paths into my code below after downloading and unzipping the chrome driver (link below in comments). The 2 paths are: [a] Path of a(/any) word file & [b] path of the unzipped chrome driver.

My Code:

from selenium import webdriver
UNZIPPED_DRIVER_PATH = 'C:/Users/....' # You need to specify this on your computer

driver = webdriver.Chrome(executable_path = UNZIPPED_DRIVER_PATH)

# Driver download links below (check which version of chrome you are using if you don't know it beforehand):
# Chrome Driver 74 Download: https://chromedriver.storage.googleapis.com/index.html?path=74.0.3729.6/
# Chrome Driver 73 Download: https://chromedriver.storage.googleapis.com/index.html?path=73.0.3683.68/
New_Trial_URL = 'https://www.wordtopdf.com/'

driver.get(New_Trial_URL)
time.sleep(np.random.uniform(4.5, 5.5, size = 1)) # Time to load the page in peace

Find_upload = driver.find_element_by_xpath('//*[@id="file-uploader"]')

WORD_FILE_PATH = 'C:/Users/..../some_word_file.docx' # You need to specify this on your computer

Find_upload.send_keys(WORD_FILE_PATH) # Not working, no action happens here

Based on something very similar in JAVA (How to handle windows file upload using Selenium WebDriver?), this should work like a charm. But Voila... total failure and thus chance to learn something new.

I have also tried:

Click_Alert = Find_upload.click()
Click_Alert(driver).send_keys(WORD_FILE_PATH)

Did not work. 'Alert' should be inbuilt function as per these 2 links (https://seleniumhq.github.io/selenium/docs/api/py/webdriver/selenium.webdriver.common.alert.html & Selenium-Python: interact with system modal dialogs).

But the 'Alert' function in the above link doesn't seem to exist in my Python setup even after executing

from selenium import webdriver

@All the readers, hope this doesn't take much of your time and we all get to learn something out of this.

Cheers

Answer 1

You get ('//*[@id="file-uploader"]') which is <a> tag

but there is hidden <input type="file"> (behind <a>) which you have to use

import selenium.webdriver

your_file = "/home/you/file.doc"
your_email = "you@example.com"

url = 'https://www.wordtopdf.com/'

driver = selenium.webdriver.Firefox()
driver.get(url)

file_input = driver.find_element_by_xpath('//input[@type="file"]')
file_input.send_keys(your_file)

email_input = driver.find_element_by_xpath('//input[@name="email"]')
email_input.send_keys(your_email)

driver.find_element_by_id('convert_now').click()

Tested with Firefox 66 / Linux Mint 19.1 / Python 3.7 / Selenium 3.141.0

---

EDIT: The same method for uploading on zamzar.com

Situation which I saw first time (so it took me longer time to create solution): it has <input type="file"> hidden under button but it doesn't use it to upload file. It create dynamically second <input type="file"> which uses to upload file (or maybe even many files - I didn't test it).

import selenium.webdriver
from selenium.webdriver.support.ui import Select
import time


your_file = "/home/furas/Obrazy/37884728_1975437959135477_1313839270464585728_n.jpg"
#your_file = "/home/you/file.jpg"
output_format = 'png'

url = 'https://www.zamzar.com/'
driver = selenium.webdriver.Firefox()
driver.get(url)

#--- file --- 

# it has to wait because paga has to create second `input[@type="file"]`
file_input = driver.find_elements_by_xpath('//input[@type="file"]')
while len(file_input) < 2:
    print('len(file_input):', len(file_input)) 
    time.sleep(0.5)
    file_input = driver.find_elements_by_xpath('//input[@type="file"]')

file_input[1].send_keys(your_file)

#--- format ---

select_input = driver.find_element_by_id('convert-format')      
select = Select(select_input)
select.select_by_visible_text(output_format)

#--- convert ---

driver.find_element_by_id('convert-button').click()

#--- download ---

time.sleep(5)

driver.find_elements_by_xpath('//td[@class="status last"]/a')[0].click()