Actions(class) and Action(interface) in selenium | demonstration of keyboard events in selenium | using keyboard events send capital letters to search this article in

Hi, in this page, we will discuss about Actions(class) and Action(interface) and keyboard events example in selenium with some key take away notes.

For, mouse events tutorial, click this link.

Actions

• It is a class and the package is org.openqa.selenium.interactions.Actions
• It represents collection of individual Action that you want to perform.
• Using this class we can handle keyboard and mouse events. i.e., 
• Keyboard interface methods 
• Mouse interface methods 

Action 

• Action is an interface 
• It represents single user interaction. 
• Using this interface, on the Actions object we perform series of actions. 
• Most widely and must use method is perform() after creating series of actions and storing in Action   

Keyboard events examples 

keyDown --> for instance, Pressing a Shift key
keyUp    --> for instance, Releasing a pressed Shift key
sendKeys --> used to send series of characters as text

Use case : Search text "Actions(class) and Action(interface) in selenium" in this site @ https://jasper-bi-suite.blogspot.com/ by sending the text in Capital letters. 

1. Locate the "search box" element and store it in WebElement variable. 
2. Create object "actionsBuilder" for Actions class and pass "driver" in its constructor.
3.  Build the series of actions on "actionBuilder" object and store it in "Action" interface variable "seriesOfKeyBoardActions" and apply build() method once the series of actions are done.
4. Perform the series actions using "perform()" method on the above created Action variable say "seriesOfKeyBoardActions" 

Click on the images to enlarge: 

The code snippet below holds shifts key and converts the text into capital letters using "keyDown" event and then releases the shift key using "keyUp" event.

//Search box element locator 
  WebElement searchBox = driver.findElement(By.xpath("//input[@name='q']"));
  
  //Actions object
  Actions actionsBuilder = new Actions(driver);
  
  //Building the series of actions
  Action seriesOfKeyBoardActions = actionsBuilder
      .moveToElement(searchBox) //Moves the mouse pointer to the center of the element
      .click()  //perform click on the serach box 
      .keyDown(searchBox,Keys.SHIFT)  // Pressing shift key
      .sendKeys(searchBox,"Actions(class) and Action(interface) in selenium") //sending search text
      .keyUp(searchBox,Keys.SHIFT) // Releasing shift key
      .build(); // building all the above 5 actions 
  
  //Performing the built actions
  seriesOfKeyBoardActions.perform();

Watch this space for walk through video tutorial for below use-case:

KeyboardEventsSendCaptialLettersForSearchingActionsArcticle.java

/* Keyboard events demo */
package keyboard.events.examples;

import org.openqa.selenium.By;
import org.openqa.selenium.Keys;
import org.openqa.selenium.WebDriver;
import org.openqa.selenium.WebElement;
import org.openqa.selenium.chrome.ChromeDriver;
import org.openqa.selenium.interactions.Action;
import org.openqa.selenium.interactions.Actions;
import org.openqa.selenium.support.ui.ExpectedConditions;
import org.openqa.selenium.support.ui.WebDriverWait;

public class KeyboardEventsSendCaptialLettersForSearchingActionsArcticle {

 public static void main(String[] args)  {
  
  WebDriver driver;
  
  //loading Chrome driver from physical drive
  System.setProperty("webdriver.chrome.driver", "D:\\006_trainings\\chromedriver_83.exe");
  System.setProperty("webdriver.chrome.silentOutput", "true");
  
  //launch the browser
  driver = new ChromeDriver();
  
  //navigate to site
  driver.navigate().to("https://jasper-bi-suite.blogspot.com/");
  
  //maximize the browser
  driver.manage().window().maximize();
  
  //Search box element locator 
  WebElement searchBox = driver.findElement(By.xpath("//input[@name='q']"));
  
  //Actions object
  Actions actionsBuilder = new Actions(driver);
  
  //Building the series of actions
  Action seriesOfKeyBoardActions = actionsBuilder
          .moveToElement(searchBox) //Moves the mouse pointer to the center of the element
          .click()  //perform click on the serach box 
          .keyDown(searchBox,Keys.SHIFT)  // Pressing shift key
          .sendKeys(searchBox,"Actions(class) and Action(interface) in selenium") //sending search text
          .keyUp(searchBox,Keys.SHIFT) // Releasing shift key
          .build(); // building all the above 5 actions 
  
  //Performing the built actions
  seriesOfKeyBoardActions.perform();
  
  //click on Search button
  WebElement searchButton = driver.findElement(By.xpath("//input[@class='gsc-search-button']"));
  searchButton.click();
  
  //close the browser
  //driver.close();
  
  //close all the browsers opened by WebDriver during execution and quit the session
  //driver.quit();
 }
}

Stay tuned for more automation!

- Sadakar Pochampalli