Understanding and Fixing "Missing Positional Arguments" and "text not defined" Errors When Using paste_keys Function with Selenium in Python

Question

I'm learning Python and working on a project using Selenium to automate pasting text from the clipboard into a website's text field. I'm referencing an answer from this Stack Overflow question: [https://stackoverflow.com/questions/28637931/paste-command-using-selenium] I've defined a paste_keys function:

def paste_keys(self, xpath, text):
os.system("echo %s| clip" % text.strip())
el = self.driver.find_element_by_xpath(xpath)
el.send_keys(Keys.CONTROL, 'v')

However, I'm facing the following errors: "two positional arguments are missing" Error: When I call the function with only the xpath argument like this: paste_keys('//*[@id="txt-url"]'), I get an error saying "two positional arguments are missing". "text not defined" Error: If I remove the self and text arguments from the function definition:

def paste_keys(xpath):
   os.system("echo %s| clip" % text.strip())
   el = self.driver.find_element_by_xpath(xpath)
   el.send_keys(Keys.CONTROL, 'v')

I get an error saying "text" is not defined.

I understand that the function expects self and text arguments, but I'm unsure what to provide for them in my context. I'm trying to paste text from the clipboard, so I don't have a specific text value to pass. As for self, I'm not using a class, so I'm unsure of its purpose.

Here's my current code:

# ... (imports and other code) ...

def paste_keys(xpath):
    el = driver.find_element_by_css_selector(xpath)
    el.send_keys(Keys.CONTROL, 'v')

def order(k): 
    # ... (other code) ...
    paste_keys("input[id='txt-url']")
    # ... (other code) ...

if __name__ == '__main__':
    order(data)

Could someone explain the purpose of the self and text arguments in the original paste_keys function and how I can adapt it to my scenario where I want to paste from the clipboard? I'd like to understand the error messages and the underlying concepts better.

Answer 1

If your method is inside a class then self makes sense there otherwise not.

self is used to refer to the class object itself.

Let's say you have a class which contains your method as a function of itself

class Hooks:
    def paste_keys(self ,xpath, text):
        os.system("echo %s| clip" % text.strip())
        el = self.driver.find_element_by_xpath(xpath)
        el.send_keys(Keys.CONTROL, 'v')

when you are gonna use that method it will be like this

Hooks hooksObject = Hooks()
hooksObject.paste_keys(xpath, text)

Python will convert your call into - Hooks.paste_keys(hooksObject, xpath, test);

Second, if you are not using the method as a class function then you can rewrite it as

def paste_keys(xpath, text):
   os.system("echo %s| clip" % text.strip())
   el = driver.find_element_by_xpath(xpath) #keep in mind - here driver has to be global, if not - you can pass it as parameter
   el.send_keys(Keys.CONTROL, 'v')

and use it like

paste_keys(xpath, text)

Also there is a gret post about self