Remove readonly attributes in Selenium WebDriver

Question

I need to edit some readonly fields with Selenium WebDriver in Java. As Selenium won't let me even find this fields I searched for solutions and found that the easiest might be to remove the readonly attribute using a JavaScript snippet with the JavaScript Executor.

While this snippet works from the Firefox console, successfully removing the attribute from all inputs, it throws an exception in Selenium.

JavaScript executor:

((JavascriptExecutor) driver).executeScript(
    "var inputs = document.getElementsByTagName('input');​​​​"+
    "for(var i = 0; i < inputs.length; i++)"+
        "inputs[i].removeAttribute('readonly','readonly');​​​​"
);

And the error returned:

Exception in thread "main" org.openqa.selenium.WebDriverException: illegal character

Command duration or timeout: 51 milliseconds

UPDATE:

The same error appears if I leave only the first JS command:

((JavascriptExecutor) driver).executeScript(
    "var inputs = document.getElementsByTagName('input');​​​​");

---

The rest of the stack trace is not relevant for this. Anyone knows how to fix this, or another way to edit the readonly fields?

Solution 1

I was not able to find the issue with your code. But in the meantime use the code given below.

List<WebElement> inputs = driver.findElements(By.tagName("input"));

for (WebElement input : inputs) {
    ((JavascriptExecutor) driver).executeScript(
                "arguments[0].removeAttribute('readonly','readonly')",input);
}

Let me know if this helps you.

Solution 2

Apparently there was a very funky character being put into your string.. as I was using my <- and -> arrow keys, it was getting caught for three characters at the end, and in the middle of the string. Seems to be some copy-pasta issue.

I fixed it just be putting it one one line, however I would still recommend going with @lost's answer as it's more explicit.

@Config(url="https://rawgithub.com/ddavison/so-tests/master/22711441.html", browser= Browser.CHROME)
public class _22711441 extends AutomationTest {
    @Test
    public void test() {
        ((JavascriptExecutor) driver).executeScript(
        // the issue was happening                          \/ here and                                                                             \/ here
        "var inputs = document.getElementsByTagName('input');for(var i = 0; i < inputs.length; i++){inputs[i].removeAttribute('readonly','readonly');}"
        );

        setText(By.id("1"), "something")
        .validateText(By.id("1"), "something");
    }
}

See the script here and the page i used to test here

Solution 3

WebElement elementName = driver.findElement(By.xpath("//div[@arid='7']//input[@id='arid7']"));
((JavascriptExecutor) driver).executeScript("arguments[0].removeAttribute('readonly','readonly')", elementName);

This worked for me

Comments

[aurbano]

It works great! I'm completely unsure about the reason why it might not have worked before, but after all I've run into so many similar problems that "should" work in Selenium that I am no longer surprised... Thanks

[Sighil]

No problem. We'll try to find out what is wrong with your code.

[ddavison]

see my answer :) some characters (i think they were just NULL characters) were being placed in your string.

[aurbano]

Thanks! I was thinking it had to be something like that, but since i was testing with the Firefox console with no errors I just couldn't figure out the problem.

[Amanda Cavallaro]

Can I get a solution to this in Ruby?