How to deal with file uploading in test automation using selenium or webdriver

Question

I think that everybody who uses Webdriver for test automation must be aware of its great advantages for web development.

But there is a huge issue if file uploading i

Answer 1

The suggestion of typing into the text box works only if the textbox is enabled. Quite a few applications force you to go through the file system file browser for obvious reasons. What do you do then? I don't think the WebDriver mavens thought of just presenting keys into the KeyBoard buffer (this used to be a "no brainer" in earlier automation days)

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After several days of little sleep, head banging and hair pulling I was able to get some of the Robot-based solution suggested here (and elsewhere).

The problem i encountered was that the dialog text box that was populated with the correct file path and name could not respond to the KeyPress/Release Events of terminating the file name with VK_ENTER as in:

private final static int Enter = KeyEvent.VK_ENTER;
keyboard.keyPress(Enter);
keyboard.keyRelease(Enter);

What happens is that the file path and file name are typed in correctly but the dialog remains opened - against my constant hoping and praying that the key emulation will terminate it and get processed by the app under testing.

Does anyone know how to get this robot to behave a bit better?