[Python] Cannot submit login form with Selenium (Python)

I am trying to login to a website using Selenium. The relevant form HTML is as follows:

<form class="ActionEmittingForm form-wrapper decorate-required" method="post" novalidate="" data-rf-form-name="LoginPageForm_SignInForm" data-rf-test-name="ActionEmittingForm">

<span data-rf-test-name="Text" class="field text Text required email-field emailInput">
<label class="label" data-rf-test-name="label" aria-label="Email Address. Required field.">Email Address</label>
<span class="input">
<div role="presentation" class="value text">
<input type="text" name="emailInput" value="" placeholder="&nbsp;" inputmode="" class="text" data-rf-input-event-type="onInput" data-rf-test-name="input" aria-label="Email Address" aria-required="true" tabindex="0">
</div>
</span>
</span>

<span data-rf-test-name="Text" class="field text Text required password-field passwordInput">
<label class="label" data-rf-test-name="label" aria-label="Password. Required field.">Password</label>
<span class="input">
<div role="presentation" class="value text">
<input type="password" name="passwordInput" value="" placeholder="&nbsp;" inputmode="" class="password" data-rf-input-event-type="onInput" data-rf-test-name="input" aria-label="Password" aria-required="true" tabindex="0">
</div>
</span>
</span>

<button type="submit" class="button Button primary submitButton" tabindex="0" role="button" data-rf-test-name="submitButton">
<span>
<span>Sign In</span>
</span>
</button>

</form>


I am using the Selenium Python package, with a remote driver, running in Docker on the same host with a standalone Firefox browser. Selenium version is 4.29.0. Firefox version is 135.0.1. Geckodriver is 0.36.0. Python version 3.11. Debian 12 host without a GUI.

Relevant code is as follows:

import time
import docker
from selenium import webdriver
from selenium.webdriver.common.by import By
from selenium.webdriver.common.keys import Keys

def setupDockerFirefoxSeleniumContainer():
client = docker.from_env()
client.images.pull("selenium/standalone-firefox:135.0.1-geckodriver-0.36.0-20250303")
firefox = client.containers.run("selenium/standalone-firefox:135.0.1-geckodriver-0.36.0-20250303",
detach = True,
name = "firefox",
ports = {4444: 4444, 7900: 7900},
shm_size = "2G",
environment = ["SE_START_XVFB=false",
"SE_SCREEN_WIDTH=1200",
"SE_SCREEN_HEIGHT=900"])
return firefox

def setupSeleniumFirefoxDriver():
try:
options=webdriver.FirefoxOptions()
options.add_argument("--headless")
options.add_argument("--disable-gpu")
options.add_argument("user-agent=Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64; rv:36.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/135.0")
driver = webdriver.Remote(
command_executor="http://127.0.0.1:4444/wd/hub",
options=options
)
driver.get("https://httpbin.org/ip")
print("Successfully started Firefox driver.")
return driver

except Exception as e:
print("Caught an exception: ", repr(e))

def cleanupDriver(d):
print("Cleaning up driver")
d.quit()

def cleanupContainer(c):
print("Cleaning up container")
c.stop()
c.remove()

def siteLogin(driver, username, password):
driver.get("https://www.MYWEBSITE.com/login")
driver.implicitly_wait(5)
driver.get_screenshot_as_file("/home/fresh_login_screen.png")

username_box = driver.find_element(by=By.NAME, value="emailInput")
password_box = driver.find_element(by=By.NAME, value="passwordInput")
submit_button = driver.find_element(by=By.CLASS_NAME, value="submitButton")

time.sleep(2)
username_box.send_keys(username)
time.sleep(2)
password_box.send_keys(password)
time.sleep(2)
driver.get_screenshot_as_file("/home/login_screen_keys_sent.png")
time.sleep(2)
#submit_button.click() # doesn't work
#submit_button.submit() # doesn't work
#password_box.submit() # doesn't work
#password_box.send_keys(Keys.ENTER) # doesn't work
submit_button.send_keys(Keys.ENTER) # doesn't work

print("Waiting for login to process.")
time.sleep(5)
driver.get_screenshot_as_file("/home/submitted_login.png")
time.sleep(10)
driver.get_screenshot_as_file("/home/another_screenshot.png")
print(driver.page_source)

def main():
firefoxContainer = setupDockerFirefoxSeleniumContainer()

print("Waiting 5 seconds for Selenium server to start")
time.sleep(5)
firefoxDriver = setupSeleniumFirefoxDriver()

try:
siteLogin(firefoxDriver, "myEmail@example.com", "crazyHardPassword")

except Exception as e:
print("Caught an exception when trying siteLogin: ", repr(e))

finally:
cleanupDriver(firefoxDriver)
cleanupContainer(firefoxContainer)

if __name__=="__main__":
main()



The login submission is not working. The page just seems to hang. In my screenshots, I can see my username and password have been sent to the correct form boxes. However, I've tried several ways to submit the form (send_keys(Keys.ENTER), click(), and submit()), but all seem to result in nothing happening. The screenshot looks the same before and after (with my username and password sitting in the form, but it looks like no form submission was attempted). Any tips for how to submit this form?

Continue reading...