Faith & Code | Reflections by Errong

  Three More Real-World Auto-Fill Bugs We Found While Building a Chrome Extension Yesterday we fixed an issue where our auto-fill engine was targeting invisible input elements instead of the actual visible fields. After deploying that fix, we continued testing across multiple vendor websites and discovered three additional issues. None of them were particularly complicated, but all three caused auto-fill failures in real-world scenarios. This is a good reminder that browser automation is often less about complex algorithms and more about handling the countless variations of web forms. Background We are building a Chrome extension that automatically fills customer information such as: First Name Last Name Email Address Phone Number Address Province Postal Code The extension works across multiple vendor websites, each built with different technologies and UI frameworks. During testing, we discovered the following issues. Issue #1: document.querySelector Only Returns the First Match I...

Extension auto-fill works on most vendor sites, but fails on Angular-based page (ng-pristine vs ng-dirty issue) Problem Background We are building a browser extension that auto-fills customer information (first name, last name, email, phone number, address, etc.) into different vendor websites. Each vendor site has different page structures, and our content script is responsible for detecting input fields and filling data automatically. Issue Symptom Most vendor sites work correctly. However, on one specific vendor site, auto-fill does not work: Our logs show values are being filled No visible changes appear in the UI Input fields remain empty from user perspective Filling input: firstName = John Filling input: email = test@example.com But UI still shows no updated values. Environment Extension: Chrome Extension (content script) Language: JavaScript Target site: Vendor web application Framework (discovered later): Angular Debugging Process W...