typeText() is typing inconsistent characters

Question

I'm beginning to dip my toes into Swift alongside writing UI tests and am having a problem with typing text into a textField. Below is the code:

func testLoginUsernameField() {
    let app = XCUIApplication()
    app.launch()

    let username = "testusername2"

    let usernameField = app.textFields["username_field"]
    XCTAssertTrue(usernameField.exists)

    usernameField.tap()
    usernameField.typeText(username)
    XCTAssertEqual(usernameField.value as! String, username)
}

The problem occurs when I do usernameField.typeText(username). My text continues to write tstusername2 rather than the testusername2.

Larsen

How is SwiftUI an appropriate tag here? I see no SwiftUI in the question. – Expatriate

Try deleting the tap(). – Expatriate

Sorry about that. I deleted the SwiftUI tag. As for deleting tap(), this results in a Neither element nor any descendant has keyboard focus error. – Larsen

OK darn, that didn't work. Okay, how about this; put back the tap() (obviously) and insert a 5-second pause before the typeText (I'm assuming you know how to do that). Does that help? – Expatriate

Unfortunately, that doesn't work either. It's odd, it's still typing but it consistently misses the second character, regardless of the word, word length, sleep, etc. – Larsen

Truly weird. Of course I can't reproduce the problem so I'm at a loss, sorry. – Expatriate

Fair enough, I appreciate you trying to help. – Larsen

How about if you write for c in username {usernameField.typeText(String(c))} ? – Expatriate

That works! Definitely slows the test a bit, but it works as I'd hoped. Thank you. – Larsen

Yeah, so what we've learned is it's missing a beat. I think this has something to do with the virtual keyboard. In my test, when I slowed it down, I saw the virtual keyboard rise up after the first letter had been typed. Try disabling the virtual keyboard and run the original test and see if that fixes it? – Expatriate

Answer 1

This issue happens on the simulator when the Hardware Keyboard is enabled.

Disable the hardware keyboard via the menu

Go to I/O -> Keyboard -> Uncheck "Connect Hardware Keyboard" or use the shortcut ⇧⌘K.

Disable the hardware programmatically

If you'd like to disable the hardware keyboard for your Scheme, no matter what simulator you run, refer to this StackOverflow post. I attempted to use other methods to disable the hardware keyboard via the App Delegate but had no luck.

Neglectful