How do i click on input type file on any browser if i m testing with Selenium Webdriver

Question

I want to use the file-chooser option to upload files. The issue is not dealing with one particular OS's file-chooser dialog box.
The issue is making Selenium click on "Choose File" button. Since the original source html is simply <input type='file'>, the browser determines how to render it as a field and a button. Since, the placement & naming of button changes depending on the browser. I have solved it with Chrome. But only because Chrome places the button on the leftmost alignment and Selenium happens to click there by default. Any clue how to navigable to that dialog box using the DOM itself?

Answer 1

Does not matter which OS or which browser your dealing with. The rule is the same. You can use XPath element locator technique to locate the element. And once that is done, you can use sendKeys() with path to file, to upload the files. Code below.

// Locating XPath of the element(using Firebug)
WebElement elem = driver.findElement(By.xpath("//input[@type='file']"));
// Mention the path of file to do the upload
elem.sendKeys("C://path/To/File.txt")