Missing text/selection manipulation primitives about webdriver HOT 7 OPEN

I could certainly argue that if the element currently has focus, the caret position should not be changed. I can't remember exactly why that isn't the case, but I'm afraid it's unlikely to be changed in the spec at this point... I wonder if anyone else can remember the details here?

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Andreas Tolfsen:

This seems somewhat related to bug 29247.

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I'm not sure if this is entirely related or if it's the right place to report that, but one use case where the lack of text selection/caret positioning lacks is a very simple one :

1. Set the caret position (or the selection) in the input wherever I want,
2. Input some characters at that position,
   ...and that's it.

Currently I found a way to set the caret position, but this feels like a common use case and perhaps a built-in function (ie. setSelection(element, start, end = null)) would help.

On the other hand, sendKeys just ignores the caret position when it sends keys, so the text selection point is moot until that bug is fixed (because it looks like a bug to me, am I wrong?).

cf. real world use case here and there.

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You can sendKeys the HOME, END, ARROW_LEFT and ARROW_RIGHT keys, which allows you to set the carat position.

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Well, as a workaround to sendKeys resetting the caret position, I tried a few variations of this idea in the original codepen mentioned in the second link I pasted, line 129-131 :

browser.keys(selectors.input0, [browser.keys.LEFT_ARROW, browser.keys.LEFT_ARROW, browser.keys.LEFT_ARROW, browser.keys.LEFT_ARROW, '123']); // Not working

browser.keys(selectors.input0, ['ArrowLeft', 'ArrowLeft', 'ArrowLeft', 'ArrowLeft', '123']); // Not working

browser.keys(selectors.input0, ['\uE012', '\uE012', '\uE012', '\uE012', '123']); // Not working

but somehow none of that worked too.

Either way, I do think sendKeys should not change the caret position, don't you?

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@illicitonion In your comment few weeks ago, you were saying :

You can sendKeys the HOME, END, ARROW_LEFT and ARROW_RIGHT keys, which allows you to set the carat position.

Would you by any chance have a working example where a script sends at least on key to an input?

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The selenium "send keys" command sets the caret position to the end of the string to facilitate users doing interesting things in a loop from the local end: early bug reports and usage suggested they'd always want to append content rather than replace what's existing. There's a strong case for what @illicitonion suggested if the focus is already in the element, but it depends on whether we have enough time to get the implementation in place or not.

If you're using the selenium python bindings and marionette, the following should work:

import selenium.webdriver
from selenium.webdriver.common.keys import Keys

d = webdriver.Firefox()
d.get('http://www.google.com')
q = d.find_element(by = 'name', value = 'q')
q.send_keys('Hello world' + Keys.LEFT + Keys.LEFT + Keys.LEFT + Keys.LEFT + Keys.BACKSPACE + 'W')

You should see the search box contain "hello World".

These APIs are a good candidate for Level 2.

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