WebDriver executing javascript strange behaviour

I'm using Webdriver through JBehave-Web distribution (3.3.4) to test an application and I'm facing something quite strange:

I'm trying to interact with a modalPanel from Richfaces, which gave me a lot of problems because it throws ElementNotVisibleException. I solved it by using javascript:

This is the code in my page object which extends from org.jbehave.web.selenium.WebDriverPage

protected void changeModalPanelInputText(String elementId, String textToEnter){
    makeNonLazy();
   开发者_运维技巧 JavascriptExecutor je = (JavascriptExecutor) webDriver();
    String script ="document.getElementById('" + elementId + "').value = '" + textToEnter + "';";
    je.executeScript(script);
}

The strange behaviour is that if I execute the test normally, it does nothing, but if I put a breakpoint in the last line (in Eclipse), select the line and execute from Eclipse (Ctrl + U), I can see the changes in the browser.

I checked the JavascriptExecutor and the WebDriver classes to see if there was any kind of buffering, but I couldn't find anything. Any ideas?

EDIT I found out that putting the thread to sleep for 1 second it makes it work, so it looks some kind of race condition, but cannot find out why...

This is the way it "works", but I'm not very happy about it:

protected void changeModalPanelInputText(String elementId, String textToEnter){
    String script ="document.getElementById('" + elementId + "').value = '" + textToEnter + "';";
    executeJavascript(script);
}

    private void executeJavascript(String script){
    makeNonLazy();
    JavascriptExecutor je = (JavascriptExecutor) webDriver();
    try {
        Thread.sleep(1500);
    } catch (InterruptedException e) {
        e.printStackTrace();
    }
    je.executeScript(script);       
}

Putting the wait in any other position doesn't work either...

First idea:

Ensure that target element is initialized and enumerable. See if this returns null:

Object objValue = je.executeScript(
    "return document.getElementById('"+elementId+"');");

Since you're using makeNonLazy(), probably just add the target as a WebElement member of your Page Object (assuming Page Factory type of initialization in JBehave).

Second idea:

Explicitly wait for the element to be available before mutating:

/**
 * re-usable utility class
 */
public static class ElementAvailable implements Predicate<WebDriver> {

    private static String IS_NOT_UNDEFINED = 
        "return (typeof document.getElementById('%s') != 'undefined');";
    private final String elementId;

    private ElementAvailable(String elementId) {
        this.elementId = elementId;
    }

    @Override
    public boolean apply(WebDriver driver) {
        Object objValue = ((JavascriptExecutor)driver).executeScript(
                String.format(IS_NOT_UNDEFINED, elementId));
        return (objValue instanceof Boolean && ((Boolean)objValue));
    }
}

...

protected void changeModalPanelInputText(String elementId, String textToEnter){
    makeNonLazy();

    // wait at most 3 seconds before throwing an unchecked Exception
    long timeout = 3;
    (new WebDriverWait(webDriver(), timeout))
            .until(new ElementAvailable(elementId));

    // element definitely available now
    String script = String.format(
            "document.getElementById('%s').value = '%s';",
            elementId,
            textToEnter);
    ((JavascriptExecutor) webDriver()).executeScript(script);
}