Does Send Key use keyboard events on IOS ?

Question

I have been through your documentation and stack overflow multiple times, but I am confused whether sendKeys function actually sends a Keyboard event through the IOS keyboard or does it simply copy the text sent by the appium-server to that text box?

For our automation we would like the keys to be keyboard events and not a simple copy paste.

Environment

• Appium version (or git revision) that exhibits the issue: v1.22.0
• Last Appium version that did not exhibit the issue (if applicable):
• Desktop OS/version used to run Appium: v1.22.0
• Node.js version (unless using Appium.app|exe):
• Npm or Yarn package manager:
• Mobile platform/version under test: IOS 15.2
• Real device or emulator/simulator: Both
• Appium CLI or Appium.app|exe: .app

Details

We have previously tried clicking on the key(using X and Y coords) once the keyboard becomes visible but that does not suite our use case

Code To Reproduce Issue

# iOS environment
import unittest
import time
from appium import webdriver
from appium.webdriver.common.appiumby import AppiumBy

desired_caps = dict(
    platformName='iOS',
    platformVersion='15.2',
    automationName='xcuitest',
    deviceName='iPhone 11 Pro'
    # app='<location to the app>'
)

driver = webdriver.Remote('http://localhost:4723/wd/hub', desired_caps)
el = driver.find_element(by=AppiumBy.ACCESSIBILITY_ID, value='Settings').click()

el = driver.find_element(by=AppiumBy.ACCESSIBILITY_ID, value='Sign in to your iPhone').click()
driver.find_element(by=AppiumBy.ACCESSIBILITY_ID, value='username-field').send_keys('Hi therellll')

[mykola-mokhnach]

It seems like https://github.com/appium/appium-xcuitest-driver#mobile-performiohidevent might be the closest alternative. In general XCTest is pretty limited about their public APIs

[mykola-mokhnach]

Thanks @mykola-mokhnach! this is exactly what I was looking for

I know I am stretching this conversation too much but…

One last thing: mobile: configureLocalization can you point me to the apple docs for this or any other place? The only references that I could find were from the appium repo (line).

I mean I don’t understand what the layout key should be when I want to write for Chinese and Japanese. The layout key is a required param as well so can’t ignore it.

This is internal Apple stuff. Simply follow the documented suggestion to retrieve possible values:

You could switch the keyboard layout in system preferences of your booted simulator, run xcrun simctl spawn booted defaults read .GlobalPreferences.plist, and inspect the value of AppleKeyboards to see possible combinations.