Pressing Ctrl + A in Selenium WebDriver

Question

Is there a way to press the Ctrl + A keys using Selenium WebDriver?

I checked the Selenium libraries and found that Selenium allows key press of special and function keys only.

Answer 1

One more solution (in Java, because you didn't tell us your language - but it works the same way in all languages with Keys class):

String selectAll = Keys.chord(Keys.CONTROL, "a");
driver.findElement(By.whatever("anything")).sendKeys(selectAll);

You can use this to select the whole text in an <input>, or on the whole page (just find the html element and send this to it).

---

For using Selenium Ruby bindings:

There's no chord() method in the Keys class in Ruby bindings. Therefore, as suggested by Hari Reddy, you'll have to use Selenium Advanced user interactions API, see ActionBuilder:

    driver.action.key_down(:control)
                 .send_keys("a")
                 .key_up(:control)
                 .perform

Answer 2

To click Ctrl+A, you can do it with Actions

  Actions action = new Actions(); 
  action.keyDown(Keys.CONTROL).sendKeys(String.valueOf('\u0061')).perform();

\u0061 represents the character 'a'

\u0041 represents the character 'A'

To press other characters refer the unicode character table - http://unicode.org/charts/PDF/U0000.pdf

Answer 3

In Selenium for C#, sending Keys.Control simply toggles the Control key's state: if it's up, then it becomes down; if it's down, then it becomes up. So to simulate pressing Control+A, send Keys.Control twice, once before sending "a" and then after.

For example, if we is an input IWebElement, the following statement will select all of its contents:

we.SendKeys(Keys.Control + "a" + Keys.Control);

Answer 4

You could try this:

driver.findElement(By.xpath(id("anything")).sendKeys(Keys.CONTROL + "a");

Answer 5

Since Ctrl+A maps to ASCII code value 1 (Ctrl+B to 2, up to, Ctrl+Z to 26).

Try:

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Text;

using OpenQA.Selenium;
using OpenQA.Selenium.IE;
using OpenQA.Selenium.Support.UI;
using OpenQA.Selenium.Interactions;
using OpenQA.Selenium.Internal;
using OpenQA.Selenium.Remote;

namespace SeleniumHqTest
{
    class Test
    {
            IWebDriver driver = new InternetExplorerDriver();
            driver.Navigate().GoToUrl("http://localhost");
            IWebElement el = driver.FindElement(By.Id("an_element_id"));
            char c = '\u0001'; // ASCII code 1 for Ctrl-A
            el.SendKeys(Convert.ToString(c));
            driver.Quit();
    }
}

Answer 6

For Python:

ActionChains(driver).key_down(Keys.CONTROL).send_keys("a").key_up(Keys.CONTROL).perform();

Answer 7

The simplest answer in C# (if you are C# inclined).

Actions action = new Actions(); 
action.KeyDown(OpenQA.Selenium.Keys.Control).SendKeys("a").KeyUp(OpenQA.Selenium.Keys.Control).perform();

This answer is almost given by Hari Reddy, but I have fixed the case which he'd got wrong on some keywords, added the KeyUp or you get in a mess leaving the control key down.

I've also added the clarification on OpenQA.Selenium.Keys, because you may also be using Windows.Forms on the same class as I was an require this clarity.

Lastly, I type "a" because I found that to be the simplest way and I can see no suggestion from the OP that they don't want the simplest answer.

Many thanks to Hari Reddy though as I was a novice in Actions class usage and I was writing many different commands. Chaining them together the way he showed is quicker :-)

Answer 8

WebDriver driver = new FirefoxDriver();

Actions action = new Actions(driver); 

action.keyDown(Keys.CONTROL).sendKeys("a").keyUp(Keys.CONTROL).perform();

This method removes the extra call ( String.ValueOf() ) to convert unicode to string.

Answer 9

It works for me:

OpenQA.Selenium.Interactions.Actions action 
    = new OpenQA.Selenium.Interactions.Actions(browser);
action.KeyDown(OpenQA.Selenium.Keys.Control)
    .SendKeys("a").KeyUp(OpenQA.Selenium.Keys.Control).Perform();

Answer 10

Actions act = new Actions(driver);
act.keyDown(Keys.CONTROL).sendKeys("a").keyUp(Keys.CONTROL).build().perform();

Answer 11

I found that in Ruby, you can pass two arguments to send_keys

Like this:

element.send_keys(:control, 'A')

Answer 12

This is what worked for me using C# (Visual Studio 2015) with Selenium:

new Actions(driver).SendKeys(Keys.Control + "A").Perform();

You can add as many keys as wanted using (+) in between.

Answer 13

Java

The Robot class will work much more efficiently than sending the keys through Selenium sendkeys. Please try:

Example:

Robot rb = new Robot();
rb.keyPress(KeyEvent.VK_CONTROL);
rb.keyPress(KeyEvent.VK_A);

To use the above Robot class, you need to import java.awt.Robot;'.

Answer 14

By using the Robot class in Java:

import java.awt.Robot;
import java.awt.event.KeyEvent;

public class Test1
{
    public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception
    {
        WebDriver d1 = new FirefoxDriver();
        d1.navigate().to("https://www.youtube.com/");
        Thread.sleep(3000);
        Robot rb = new Robot();
        rb.keyPress(KeyEvent.VK_TAB);
        rb.keyRelease(KeyEvent.VK_TAB);
        rb.keyPress(KeyEvent.VK_TAB);
        rb.keyRelease(KeyEvent.VK_TAB);

        // Perform [Ctrl+A] Operation - it works
        rb.keyPress(KeyEvent.VK_CONTROL);
        rb.keyPress(KeyEvent.VK_A);

        // It needs to release key after pressing
        rb.keyRelease(KeyEvent.VK_A);
        rb.keyRelease(KeyEvent.VK_CONTROL);
        Thread.sleep(3000);
    }
}