I use RSelenium to connect to an internal website that asks for user login via a prompt like this:

(note that the URL=red bar is redacted)

Connecting to the Selenium Server and accessing the website works, but I cannot access the user prompt and therefore cannot login.

Is there any way I can provide user and pw to the prompt using RSelenium?

I use the code like so:

Note that for testing purposes you can use this URL: https://the-internet.herokuapp.com/basic_auth with admin admin.

library(RSelenium)
sel <- list(addr = "THE-SELENIUM-IP", port = 4444)

dr <- remoteDriver(
  remoteServerAddr = sel$addr,
  port = sel$port
)
res <- dr$open()

full_url <- "https://the-internet.herokuapp.com/basic_auth"
dr$navigate(full_url)

using dr$screenshot(display = TRUE) I receive this error Dismissed user prompt dialog: This site is asking you to sign in

Alternatively, I can try to define User and PW in the url like so:

user <- "MYUSER"
pw <- "MYPASSWORD@123"

full_url <- paste0("http://", user, ":", URLencode(pw, reserved = TRUE), "@https://the-internet.herokuapp.com/basic_auth")

dr$navigate(full_url)
dr$screenshot(display = TRUE)

But I get the same error.

Note that this is a prompt and not part of the HTML website (ie I cannot findElementBy(...) and insert values like could with pure HTML elements).

Edit - another unsuccessful attempt

I also tried this following this:

user <- "MYUSER"
pw <- "MYPASSWORD@123"

script <- glue::glue(
  "browserstack_executor: {\"action\": \"sendBasicAuth\", \"arguments\": {\"username\": \"{{user}}\", \"password\": \"{{pw}}\", \"timeout\": \"1000\"}}",
  .open = "{{", .close = "}}"
)
dr$executeScript(script)

but I get the error: Dismissed user prompt dialog: This site is asking you to sign in.

Edit 2 - Docker website for MWE

If you want to create a simple web app with basic auth for debugging, you can use the following docker image and command:

file nginx.conf

# see also https://stackoverflow.com/a/67981564/3048453
server {
  listen 80 default_server;
  listen [::]:80 default_server;
  location / {
    default_type text/plain;
    return 200 "Welcome";
  }
  location /auth {
    auth_basic "Restricted";
    auth_basic_user_file "/etc/nginx/.htpasswd";
    proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:8080;
  }
}
server {
  listen 8080;
  location / {
    default_type text/plain;
    return 200 "AUTHENTICATED";
  }
}

file Dockerfile

FROM nginx:1.23.1
RUN apt-get update && apt-get install -y apache2-utils && mkdir -p etc/nginx && htpasswd -c -B -b /etc/nginx/.htpasswd user password
COPY nginx.conf /etc/nginx/conf.d/default.conf
RUN service nginx restart

Command to start the container: docker build -t nginx-so-tester . && docker run --rm -p 80:80 nginx-so-tester

And then you can visit http://localhost/auth. The credentials are user and password.

Edit 3 - GUI of Remote Docker Instance

While debugging this problem, I setup a docker instance to which I can connect to and look at what is happening on the browser side.

I start a docker selenium instance with docker run --rm -p 4444:4444 -p 7900:7900 --shm-size="2g" selenium/standalone-firefox:103.0 and then connect from RSelenium to it with:

dr <- remoteDriver(
  remoteServerAddr = "localhost",
  port = 4444L
)
dr$open()

at the same time I open my browser to localhost:7900 and provide the password secret (default pw by selenium) and connect to the VNC and see the following:

When I navigate to the problematic URL like so

url <- "http://my.redacted-url.com"
dr$navigate(url)

I see the following in the VNC browser:

I also tried to use dr$sendKeysToAlert(list("user", keys = "TAB", "password", keys = "ENTER")) but get a 401 (ie the authorization didnt work because the credentials where not pasted correctly to the form, I guess).