user interface - How can I upload a PDF file using Karate UI Automation?

Question

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Answer 1

EDIT: first read this answer: https://stackoverflow.com/a/61904351/143475 - because the Chrome native integration supports driver.inputFile() which is available in 0.9.6.RC4

File upload is a well-known hard problem to solve in browser automation. We will need some contributions from the community, but here is a demo I just experimented with using Karate Robot: https://github.com/intuit/karate/tree/develop/karate-robot

Feature:

Scenario:
* driver 'http://the-internet.herokuapp.com/upload'
* robot { app: '^Chrome', highlight: true }
* robot.click('choose-file.png')
* robot.input('/Users/pthomas3/Desktop')
* robot.input(Key.ENTER)
* robot.click('file-name.png')
* robot.input(Key.ENTER)
* delay(1000)
* click('#file-submit')
* delay(2000)
* screenshot()

You can see a video of the execution here: https://twitter.com/ptrthomas/status/1253373486384295936

The other options I can think of:

a) Use Karate's API testing capabilities to perform a multipart file upload: https://github.com/intuit/karate#multipart-file - this is actually in most cases sufficient to "complete" the flow you have. For example for this exact same flow you see above, it looks like this:

* url 'http://the-internet.herokuapp.com/upload'
* multipart file file = { read: 'billie.png', filename: 'billie.png', contentType: 'image/png' }
* method post

And typically you may need to add a cookie or two, which you can easily pass from the browser to the API test / HTTP client.

b) The other option is something I haven't tried yet, you can "fake" the part of the UI that does the file-upload and replace it with something else, if it can get you forward in your flow. Refer this: https://twitter.com/KarateDSL/status/1248996522357739521