ShadowRoot which is not a case of an element

Question

I am writing a test (in Java with Selenium) where the HTML contains a shadow root as in the picture below (there are many elements are under the shadow root):

There is some code existing for other projects to get the root:

private WebElement get_local_shadow_root(String shadow_root_description, String shadow_root_xpath) {
    WebElement root_element = waitForXPathVisibility(shadow_root_description, shadow_root_xpath);

    WebElement shadow_root = null;
    Object o = ((JavascriptExecutor) driver).executeScript("return arguments[0].shadowRoot", root_element);
    shadow_root = (WebElement) o;
    return (WebElement) shadow_root;
}

So this is called by the following

 get_local_shadow_root("A description ignored", "//research-provider-comp/span" );

The waitForXpathVisibility() method just does a find on the xpath and returns it. Anyway, this is working for others, but for me I get a message that org.openqa.selenium.remote.ShadowRoot cannot be cast to org.openqa.selenium.WebElement .

 System.out.println(o.getClass())

returns a class org.openqa.selenium.remote.ShadowRoot . I cannot make a variable of this type as org.openqa.selenium.remote.ShadowRoot is not visible.

So any suggestions what to do? Just as an example, here is an example of a field (zip code) in the ShadowRoot:

 <input type="text" name="zipCode" data-testid="zip-code-text-box" class="width100" value="">

HTML with #shadow-root below:

"

Answer 1

private WebElement get_shadow_root(String shadow_root_description, String shadow_root_xpath) { try { WebElement root_element = waitForXPathVisibility(shadow_root_description, shadow_root_xpath);

        WebElement shadow_root = null;
        Object o = ((JavascriptExecutor) driver).executeScript("return arguments[0].shadowRoot", root_element);

        if (o instanceof WebElement) {
            shadow_root = (WebElement) o;
        } else {
            // https://titusfortner.com/2021/11/22/shadow-dom-selenium.html
            Map<?, ?> m = (Map<?, ?>) o;
            String id = (String) m.entrySet().iterator().next().getValue();
            shadow_root = new RemoteWebElement();
            ((RemoteWebElement) shadow_root).setParent((RemoteWebDriver) driver);
            ((RemoteWebElement) shadow_root).setId(id);
        }
        return shadow_root;
    } catch (ClassCastException e) {
        WebElement root_element = driver.findElement(By.xpath(shadow_root_xpath));
        JavascriptExecutor jse = (JavascriptExecutor) driver;
        SearchContext shadowRoot = (SearchContext) jse.executeScript("return arguments[0].shadowRoot",
                root_element);
        WebElement shadowContent = shadowRoot.findElement(By.cssSelector("div"));
        return shadowContent;
    }
}