How can I enter tomorrow's date into a text field using Java and Selenium2/Webdriver

Question

I am writing an automated test in Java using Selenium2/WebDriver. I need to validate a birthday in the future is not allowed. To get tomorrow's date, I am using:

Calendar calendar = Calendar.getInstance();
Date today = calendar.getTime();
calendar.add(Calendar.DAY_OF_YEAR, 1);

I am having trouble printing that to a text field, since .sendKeys requires characters. Any help is appreciated. I'm also unsure if that is the best way to get tomorrow's date.

Answer 1

Your code is basically right. Use a Calendar to produce Date objects:

Calendar calendar = Calendar.getInstance();
Date today = calendar.getTime();

calendar.add(Calendar.DAY_OF_YEAR, 1);
Date tomorrow = calendar.getTime();

Use SimpleDateFormat to format the Date as a String :

DateFormat dateFormat = new SimpleDateFormat("dd-MMM-yyyy");

String todayAsString = dateFormat.format(today);
String tomorrowAsString = dateFormat.format(tomorrow);

System.out.println(todayAsString);
System.out.println(tomorrowAsString);

Prints:

09-Aug-2012
10-Aug-2012

You can use Selenium to send those String objects to the date control (if it accepts keyed input, of course). You'll need to adjust the date pattern "dd-MMM-yyyy" to match the format expected by the input control on the page, eg perhaps it's ( "MM/dd/YY" )?

Answer 2

First, don't you mean to add before defining the date? Then, you could do a

today.toString()

to assign via sendkeys, but IMO you should look first at the format the widget accepts (eg european vs US) and format your date accordingly (eg using something like this ).