How to use Selenium to enter a tab character into a textarea?

Question

I'm using Selenium Web Driver (Java, Chrome Browser). I would like to enter a tab character into a text area. By default, entering a tab character causes the next input to be focused, but I actually want the tab character to be printed into the textarea input.

Since my tests are running on a windows machine, I thought I could use the alt-code to enter the tab. IE

Hold alt
Press 0
Press 9
Release alt

But I'm not sure how to do this programmatically with WebDriver. I tried the following:

WebElement myTextArea = driver.findElement(By.cssSelector("form textarea"));

myTextArea.sendKeys("before_tab", Keys.chord(Keys.ALT, Keys.NUMPAD0, Keys.NUMPAD9), "after_tab");

...but it just printed "before_tabafter_tab" into the text area, I guess because it's pressing ALT, 0, and 9 all at the same time which doesn't translate to a printable character.

I would also consider pasting either via keyboard shortcut or context menu (this is actually closer to how I expect the user to enter text into the textarea), but I can't see how to put the text onto the clipboard for the selenium-driven browser to access.

Any help would be appreciated.

Maybe check http://stackoverflow.com/questions/7875416/how-do-i-send-special-characters-via-sendkeys — m4ktub, May 29 '15 at 09:20
And http://stackoverflow.com/questions/11503736/key-press-in-ctrla-selenium-webdriver — Ajinkya, May 29 '15 at 09:26

score 2 · Accepted Answer · edited May 29 '15 at 18:03

2

You can use following piece of Java code:

Robot rb = new Robot();

StringSelection textToPaste= new StringSelection("  ");//make sure u enter tab here

Toolkit.getDefaultToolkit().getSystemClipboard().setContents(textToPaste, null);

rb.keyPress(KeyEvent.VK_CONTROL);    
rb.keyPress(KeyEvent.VK_V);    
rb.keyRelease(KeyEvent.VK_V);    
rb.keyRelease(KeyEvent.VK_CONTROL);

edited May 29 '15 at 18:03

Saifur

16,081
6
49
73

answered May 29 '15 at 10:19

Shruti Singh

180
2
11

Thanks. I didn't use the robot class, but your answer tells me how to put text onto the clipboard and that worked for me. – Ryan Bennetts Jun 02 '15 at 01:01

score 0 · Answer 2 · edited May 29 '15 at 18:03

Have you tried using robot class

Focus on the text area

driver.findElement(By.cssSelector("form textarea")).sendKeys("");

Use robot class to enter keys into text area

Robot robot = new Robot();
robot.keyPress(KeyEvent.VK_ALT);
robot.keyPress(KeyEvent.VK_0);
robot.keyPress(KeyEvent.VK_9);
robot.keyRelease(KeyEvent.VK_0);
robot.keyRelease(KeyEvent.VK_9);
robot.keyRelease(KeyEvent.VK_ALT);

Hope this helps you...

score -1 · Answer 3 · edited May 29 '15 at 18:03

-1

You can use the windows Clipboard as follows:

 string text = "my text and tab" + Keys.Tab;
 Clipboard.SetText(text);

You can then use Keys.Control + "V" to paste this in your control.

edited May 29 '15 at 18:03

Saifur

16,081
6
49
73

answered May 29 '15 at 10:04

Steve

367
3
11

This would convert the Enum to a string, resulting in "my text and tabTab" – realbart Mar 06 '18 at 12:44

How to use Selenium to enter a tab character into a textarea?

3 Answers3