Fix for driver.getKeyboard().sendKeys() with the W3C protocol

It is my understanding that, since the switch from JSONWP to the W3C protocol, the syntax driver.getKeyboard().sendKeys() is not supported anymore, the reason being that the underlying command is not present in the W3C specification. Can somebody please help answer these two questions:

• What is the recommended way to accomplish the same functionality with the latest version of Appium?
• Should the driver.getKeyboard().sendKeys() API be removed from all language bindings? My stance on this is that we should get the driver.getKeyboard().sendKeys() syntax working again through a workaround implemented in either language bindings or Appium code, but I am not familiar with the Appium internals and I might be wrong.

Any qualified opinion and advice on this issue is highly appreciated.

[adrianth]

@Warren25 This works if you can come up with a locator for the element. However, in cases where you can’t (e.g. some type of dynamically composed UI), you can’t get a reference to the element. However, if you can somehow figure out the coordinates of the element relative to some other element that you are able to locate, then you can tap the element to bring it in focus. This is where the driver.getKeyboard().sendKeys() would have been useful, if it worked, so you can type in the curently focused element.

I didn’t get to try the method suggested by @mykola-mokhnach, but it sounds like it should work. It’s weird that driver.switchTo().activeElement() returns a WebElement and not a MobileElement, but that’s hopefully not a problem.

[lock[bot]]

This thread has been automatically locked since there has not been any recent activity after it was closed. Please open a new issue for related bugs.