webElem$sendKeysToElement() throws "java.lang.String cannot be cast to [Ljava.lang.CharSequence" error

Operating System

dockerhub: rocker/verse:latest (ubuntu20/amd64) confirmed on tags 4.0.3, 4.0.4

Selenium Server version (selenium-server-standalone-3.0.1.jar etc.)

dorckerhub: selenium/standalone-chrome-debug:3.141.59

Browser version (firefox 50.1.0, chrome 54.0.2840.100 (64-bit) etc.)

Google Chrome 83.0.4103.14 dev

Other driver version (chromedriver 2.27, geckodriver v0.11.1, iedriver x64_3.0.0, PhantomJS 2.1.1 etc.)

ChromeDriver 83.0.4103.39 (ccbf011cb2d2b19b506d844400483861342c20cd-refs/branch-heads/4103@{#416})

Expected behaviour

at some point between 2021/3/7~3/10, after a routine container update, all code that follows this pattern started throwing exceptions:

    webElem <- remDr$findElement(using="xpath", value = 'somexpath')
    webElem$sendKeysToElement(list(stringvalue))

workaround is to rewrite the above code as: (pass a character object instead of a list)

    # pass a character object instead of a list
    webElem$sendKeysToElement(stringvalue)

Actual behaviour

Following error is displayed, halting the execution.

Selenium message:java.lang.String cannot be cast to [Ljava.lang.CharSequence; Error: Summary: UnknownError Detail: An unknown server-side error occurred while processing the command. Further Details: run errorDetails method

Steps to reproduce the behaviour

I'm currently investigating. The fact the codebase was working perfectly fine until last week, suggest something may have changed in RSelenium and or rocker/verse container.

ropensci / RSelenium