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Posted March 9, 2012

Selenium Tips: Uploading Files in Remote WebDriver

Since it's been a while since my last Selenium testing tips blog post, I thought it was time to share some Selenium love again. Today we're covering WebDriver's native solution to a very common issue when doing distributed cross browser testing: uploading files in remote servers. As you may know, the way to address this in Selenium 1 is to place your files in an accessible web server and use the attachFile command that points to the correct URL. With Selenium 2, the Selenium Dev team has luckily made this a lot more straightforward. For those of you doing this locally, all you need to do is use the sendKeys command to type the local path of the file in any file field. This works like a charm in all drivers. When moving this test to a remote server (such as, for example, our Selenium 2 Cloud), all you need to do is use the setFileDetector method to let WebDriver know that you're uploading files from your local computer to a remote server instead of just typing a path. Almost magically, the file will be base64 encoded and sent transparently through the JSONWireProtocol for you before writing the fixed remote path. This is an excellent solution, as it lets you switch your tests from a local to remote Driver without having to worry about changing your tests' code. This feature is available in all the official Selenium 2 bindings, just make sure Selenium 2.8.0 or newer is used as this feature has been released then. Here are some examples tests: Java

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import junit.framework.Assert;
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import junit.framework.TestCase;
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import org.openqa.selenium.*;
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import org.openqa.selenium.remote.*;
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import java.net.URL;
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import java.util.concurrent.TimeUnit;
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public class TestingUploadSe2Sauce extends TestCase {
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    private RemoteWebDriver driver;
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    public void setUp() throws Exception {
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        DesiredCapabilities capabillities = DesiredCapabilities.firefox();
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        capabillities.setCapability("version", "7");
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        capabillities.setCapability("platform", Platform.XP);
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        capabillities.setCapability("selenium-version", "2.18.0");
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        capabillities.setCapability("name", "Remote File Upload using Selenium 2's FileDetectors");
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        driver = new RemoteWebDriver(
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           new URL("http://<username>:<api-key>@ondemand.saucelabs.com:80/wd/hub"),
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           capabillities);
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        driver.setFileDetector(new LocalFileDetector());
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        driver.manage().timeouts().implicitlyWait(30, TimeUnit.SECONDS);
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    }
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    public void testSauce() throws Exception {
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        driver.get("http://sl-test.herokuapp.com/guinea_pig/file_upload");
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        WebElement upload = driver.findElement(By.id("myfile"));
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        upload.sendKeys("/Users/sso/the/local/path/to/darkbulb.jpg");
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        driver.findElement(By.id("submit")).click();
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        driver.findElement(By.tagName("img"));
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        Assert.assertEquals("darkbulb.jpg (image/jpeg)", driver.findElement(By.tagName("p")).getText());
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    }
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    public void tearDown() throws Exception {
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        driver.quit();
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    }
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}

Ruby

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require 'rubygems'
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require "test/unit"
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require 'selenium-webdriver'
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class ExampleTest < Test::Unit::TestCase
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   def setup
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      caps = Selenium::WebDriver::Remote::Capabilities.firefox
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      caps.version = "5"
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      caps.platform = :XP
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      caps[:name] = "Remote File Upload using Selenium 2 with Ruby"
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      caps['selenium-version'] = "2.18.0"
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      @driver = Selenium::WebDriver.for(
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        :remote,
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        :url => "http://<username>:<api-key>@saucelabs.com:4444/wd/hub",
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        :desired_capabilities => caps)
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      @driver.file_detector = lambda do |args|
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         # args => ["/path/to/file"]
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         str = args.first.to_s
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         str if File.exist?(str)
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      end
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   end
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   def test_sauce
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      @driver.navigate.to "http://sl-test.herokuapp.com/guinea_pig/file_upload"
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      element = @driver.find_element(:id, 'myfile')
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      element.send_keys "/Users/sso/SauceLabs/sauce/hostess/maitred/maitred/public/images/darkbulb.jpg"
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      @driver.find_element(:id, "submit").click
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      @driver.find_element(:tag_name, "img")
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      assert "darkbulb.jpg (image/jpeg)" == @driver.find_element(:tag_name, "p").text
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   end
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   def teardown
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      @driver.quit
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   end
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end

Pro tip: Write your own FileHandler that will use special codes to represent files before typing paths (locally) or uploading them (remotely). Example: "test-file:small-image"

Santiago Suarez Ordoñez

Published:

Mar 9, 2012

Topics

Selenium

Open Source

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