Textarea not working with Firefox

[ylavoie]

We are doing tests using a Selenium hub latest (3.141.59) and multiple browsers. Although Chrome & Opera works perfectly Firefox hangs while trying to get a value from a TEXTAREA. Even the old PhantomJS works on standalone

We are using S::R::D 1.42 and here is the debug log from the driver with Firefox:

( STDOUT )  job  1    Prepping findChildElements
( STDOUT )  job  1    Executing findChildElements
( STDOUT )  job  1    REQ: POST, http://fileserver:4444/wd/hub/session/2726bbaf-34ba-4652-ba6e-fcb2e5cf145c/element/6da077d3-7edc-424e-bf76-69f13b4fb833/elements, {"value":".//*[@id=\"description_1\"]\n           | .//input[@type=\"hidden\" and\n                      @name=\"description_1\"]","using":"xpath"}
( STDOUT )  job  1    RES: {"value":[{"element-6066-11e4-a52e-4f735466cecf":"3be07cbd-601c-445f-9ce6-a7930136ed28"}]}
( STDOUT )  job  1
( STDOUT )  job  1    Prepping getElementTagName
( STDOUT )  job  1    Executing getElementTagName
( STDOUT )  job  1    REQ: GET, http://fileserver:4444/wd/hub/session/2726bbaf-34ba-4652-ba6e-fcb2e5cf145c/element/3be07cbd-601c-445f-9ce6-a7930136ed28/name, {}
( STDOUT )  job  1    RES: {"value":"textarea"}
( STDOUT )  job  1
( STDOUT )  job  1    Prepping getElementAttribute
( STDOUT )  job  1    Executing getElementAttribute
( STDOUT )  job  1    REQ: GET, http://fileserver:4444/wd/hub/session/2726bbaf-34ba-4652-ba6e-fcb2e5cf145c/element/3be07cbd-601c-445f-9ce6-a7930136ed28/attribute/value, {}
( STDOUT )  job  1    RES: {"value":""}

The same test using chrome gives the desired Part 1 value.

( STDOUT )  job  1    Prepping findChildElements
( STDOUT )  job  1    Executing findChildElements
( STDOUT )  job  1    REQ: POST, http://fileserver:4444/wd/hub/session/ac2cf3c2e22d853a8daf1e003f2b420d/element/9234e571-23fa-4021-ace6-66e6e7ccb0e3/elements, {"using":"xpath","value":".//*[@id=\"description_1\"]\n           | .//input[@type=\"hidden\" and\n                      @name=\"description_1\"]"}
( STDOUT )  job  1    RES: {"value":[{"element-6066-11e4-a52e-4f735466cecf":"721b28f6-aca8-444e-b2d6-a28d4c07b95b"}]}
( STDOUT )  job  1
( STDOUT )  job  1    Prepping getElementTagName
( STDOUT )  job  1    Executing getElementTagName
( STDOUT )  job  1    REQ: GET, http://fileserver:4444/wd/hub/session/ac2cf3c2e22d853a8daf1e003f2b420d/element/721b28f6-aca8-444e-b2d6-a28d4c07b95b/name, {}
( STDOUT )  job  1    RES: {"value":"textarea"}
( STDOUT )  job  1
( STDOUT )  job  1    Prepping getElementAttribute
( STDOUT )  job  1    Executing getElementAttribute
( STDOUT )  job  1    REQ: GET, http://fileserver:4444/wd/hub/session/ac2cf3c2e22d853a8daf1e003f2b420d/element/721b28f6-aca8-444e-b2d6-a28d4c07b95b/attribute/value, {}
( STDOUT )  job  1    RES: {"value":"Part 1"}

Because 3 browsers are working, we do suspect Firefox. Any suggestion for a workaround?

[teodesian]

Strong suspicion this is related to what is happening in #468.

You should probably use a javascript workaround:

$element->execute_script(qq{
    var elem = arguments[0];
    return elem.value;
});

If that still fails, then there's something seriously wrong with firefox driver. I guess the layoffs have really done a number on mozilla.

[ylavoie]

It works perfectly well with the polyfill so, as we both guessed, the Firefox driver has to be the problem.

[ylavoie]

The final answer was not to polyfill WebElement but the fact that Chrome & Opera (same engine) and thus most probably Microsoft Edge now, do fallback on get_attribute when get_property fails.

For JSONWIRE compatibility, we were calling get_attribute($element,1) to force it even on WD3 enabled browsers. The final solution was this:

sub get_attribute {
    my ($self, $id, $att) = @_;

    my $element = $self->_resolve_id($id);  # Get the WebElement
    my $value;
    $value = $element->get_attribute($att)  # Try with property/attribute
        if $self->_driver->{is_wd3};
    return $value
        // $element->get_attribute($att,1); # Force using attribute
}

That fixed it for Firefox and allowed us to test with it, along with Chrome, Opera and even PhantomJS

[teodesian]

In retrospect the "do exactly what the user requests" approach clearly was the wrong one, what everyone actually wants is DWIM, and the browser drivers themselves have embraced that. So, I will simply rip out this bit and make it DWIM by default.