Selenium - Text entered in same field, even though intended to type in different fields

Question

Using selenium, when trying to enter username and password in login form, sometimes the text is entered on the same field. Username and password are having unique identifier.

For sending keys, the following steps are done.

 sendKeys(By.id("login_username"), "abc");     
 sendKeys(By.id("login_password"), "efg");     

 public void sendKeys(By locator, String text) {
      WebElement element = findElement(locator);
      if(element != null) {
           element.clear();
           element.sendKeys();
      }
 }

 public WebElement findElement(By locator) {
      return wait(org.openqa.selenium.support.ui.ExpectedConditions.presenceOfElementLocated(locator));
  }

 public WebElement wait(ExpectedCondition<WebElement> condition) {
      Wait<WebDriver> wait = new FluentWait<WebDriver>(driver).pollingEvery(1, TimeUnit.SECONDS)
                .withTimeout(60, TimeUnit.SECONDS)
                .ignoreAll(Arrays.asList(NoSuchElementException.class, TimeoutException.class));
     return wait.until(condition);
 }

But somehow, when entering text, both the username and password texts are getting typed onto the password field. This is not happening always though. Not able to understand what could possibly go wrong or what to check. Any suggestions...

platform: Ubuntu 16.04.1 LTS 64-bit 
chromedriver version: 2.25
chrome browser version: 55.0.2883.87

Thanks in advance.

page URL is internal. username id = login_username / password id = login_password — Sarath, Dec 26 '16 at 06:53
add some of your code snipped. how, you are trying to locate and `html` as well — NarendraR, Dec 26 '16 at 07:03
how do you get the locator?`driver.findElement(By.id("login_username"))` — gihan-maduranga, Dec 26 '16 at 07:05

score 0 · Answer 1 · edited May 23 '17 at 11:53

The sendKeys() action performs the following steps:

Gets the coordinates of the element
Clicks at the coordinates it got (using a mouse action)
"Types" the text (that will be received by whatever element is currently focused)

It can go wrong if the element can't be focused when starting the action (because it's disabled for example), or if the coordinates change between getting the coordinates and clicking/focusing the element (because the layout is still changing).

Another common cause can be onClick action hooked on the element, that can lead to race conditions. Without seeing the actual page, it is possible that after selenium clicks, an onClick action is still working when the text is being typed. This basically looks like this:

Selenium clicks
onClick action starts (element might get focused only after it finishes)
Selenium starts typing (onClick haven't returned yet, so the wrong elements gets the text)
the onClick action finishes, but by that time Selenium finished too.

As a solution you can try focusing the element directly, and wait until it is really focused before sending the keys. This question might be of use for this case.

Selenium - Text entered in same field, even though intended to type in different fields

1 Answers1