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.

Solution 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

Solution 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

Solution 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);

Solution 4

You could try this:

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

Solution 5

For Python:

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

View more solutions

Comments

[AJJ]

i missed to tell by language. I use ruby with selenium

[AJJ]

Thanks. But this does not work for me. Still i could not copy all the texts in the editor. i am using selenium 2.20 on firefox 3.6 or firefox 11.

[Adrien Schuler]

Worked for me with the selenium-webdriver ruby gem, using the firefox driver but this isn't working with the chrome driver.

[Chexpir]

Don't forget to have keyUp of the CONTROL Key or you will have weird errors in future tests.

[C.J.]

Same for me. Works in firefox but not chrome.

[L_7337]

Thank you. I've been looking for this.

[SüniÚr]

rb means robot? and where you initialize rb ? :)

[Ripon Al Wasim]

@Csanesz: Yes, rb is the instance of Robot

[Ripon Al Wasim]

You can initialize Robot as: Robot rb = new Robot();

[mrfreester]

I believe in ruby you can just do send_keys(:control, "a")

[ntk4]

Thanks, this helped me for my python application, using driver.send_keys(Keys.TAB)

[Jalles10]

Great. By using your comment, In R lang using the Rselenium I get the result of Control+A too. In this case I had to type: page$sendKeysToActiveElement(list(key = 'control',"a", key = 'control'))

[Suraj Rao]

Thank you for this code snippet, which might provide some limited, immediate help. A proper explanation would greatly improve its long-term value by showing why this is a good solution to the problem, and would make it more useful to future readers with other, similar questions. Please edit your answer to add some explanation, including the assumptions you've made.

[Francesco Boi]

Generally it is better to add some text in your answer to explain better to the person who asked the question: it is not guarantee he understands directly from the code.

[mihkov]

This not working for me, WebDriver, Version=3.141.0.0. C# VS 2019 (I think the VS version doesn't matter)

[Peter Mortensen]

That is true in a 1980s terminal, but does it also work here?

[Peter Mortensen]

A more complete answer should include keyUp. As the OP has not left the building, that should be possible (also verifying that it actually works). You can edit your answer.

[Peter Mortensen]

It also works in Python and for several keys (though the identifiers for the keys are in uppercase and the name of the function from Python is in snake case - send_keys). E.g. for Shift + Alt + Y: send_keys(Keys.SHIFT + Keys.ALT + "y" + Keys.SHIFT + Keys.ALT)

[Peter Mortensen]

Isn't use of keyDown() required (not a rhetorical question)?