selenium.common.exceptions.InvalidArgumentException: Message: invalid argument: File not found error invoking send_keys() using Selenium

Question

I'm new to Selenium Automated Testing and I'm just trying to do a simple task by typing in "hi" in the text box on a web page.

My code looks like this:

input = driver.find_element(By.XPATH, "//input[@type='file']")
input.send_keys('hi')

But when I run the code I received this error:

selenium.common.exceptions.InvalidArgumentException: Message: invalid argument: File not found : hi

Any ideas on how to fix this?

Answer 1

You first need to import "By"

from selenium.webdriver.common.by import By
input=driver.find_element(By.XPATH, '//input[@type="file"]')
input.send_keys("hi")

You can also write it in (although not suggested method to do )

from selenium.webdriver.common.by import By
driver.find_element(By.XPATH, '//input[@type="file"]').send_keys("hi")

Answer 2

This error message...

selenium.common.exceptions.InvalidArgumentException: Message: invalid argument: File not found

...implies that the WebDriver instance was unable to find a file through the character sequence you have sent through send_keys() .

The relevant HTML DOM would have helped us to debug your issue in a better way. Still it is clear from the Locator Strategy which you have used, that the expected content must be of type as file . Additionally it is possible, there is a JavaScript involved which checks the contents passed to the element if at all the contents refers to a valid file .

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Solution

You need to pass a valid file as an argument with send_keys() as follows:

driver.find_element(By.XPATH, "//input[@type='file']").send_keys("/path/to/filename.extension")