How to press Ctrl+A to select all content in a page by Selenium WebDriver using Java

Question

I want to select all content by pressing Ctrl+a from keyboard by using WebDriver with Java. I wrote the following code:

Actions actionObj = new Actions(driver);
actionObj.keyDown(Keys.CONTROL)
         .sendKeys(Keys.chord("A"))
         .keyUp(Keys.CONTROL)
         .perform();

Unfortunately, it did not work. What's the wrong in my WebDriver Java code?

Gasteropod

Answer 1

To select the whole page:

driver.findElement(By.xpath("//body")).sendKeys(Keys.chord(Keys.CONTROL, "a"));

cssSelector is faster than xpath. So it could be done by using CSSPath also. Below is the way:

driver.findElement(By.cssSelector("body")).sendKeys(Keys.chord(Keys.CONTROL, "a"));

Exertion

This solution does not work for me in Chrome on Linux. What may be the reason? – Downstage

I get AttributeError: type object 'Keys' has no attribute 'chord' error for some reason when I use chord. Any ideas folks? – Checked

@baltusaj You're probably using the wrong Keys. You need to use org.openqa.selenium.Keys – Cynewulf

Long standing issues with this on Mac OS and Chrome driver: bugs.chromium.org/p/chromedriver/issues/detail?id=30 – Enchiridion

@baltoro in python you simply send_keys(Keys.CONTROL + "a") – Bonds

Answer 2

Try to chord the Ctrl+A keys. The code below is working in my case:

element.sendKeys(Keys.chord(Keys.CONTROL, "a"));

Cameo

yes, this is working nicely. I visited www.google.com and I selected the text of google text box as: driver.findElement(By.id("gbqfq")).sendKeys(Keys.chord(Keys.CONTROL, "a")); It is working well according to your direction... thanks. I want to select whole page of google. How can I do that? – Gasteropod

I stumbled upon the answer to this due to a bug in some of my automated tests... I used a CSS selector that ended up selecting an element of the page that wasn't an input field (like a div, for example)... when the test sent the CTRL+A to this element it ended up selecting the whole page. – Cameo

Complementing the comment above, Webdriver generally tries to emulate the user in the best way it can... What happened when it sent a CTRL+A to an element that wasn't an input is what would happen if we did it manually (clicked anywhere in the page that wasn't an input and pressed CTRL+A). – Cameo

Thanks a lot. I sent CTRL+A to a div of the page and whole page was selected. My main goal was to select all. This is good solution Luiz – Gasteropod

I get AttributeError: type object 'Keys' has no attribute 'chord' error for some reason when I use chord. Any ideas folks? – Checked

What is the alternate in C#? – Loos

Answer 3

Mac users should use Cmnd instead of Control:

element.sendKeys(Keys.chord(Keys.COMMAND, "a"));

Intracardiac

Answer 4

Python

#! /usr/bin/env python

from selenium import webdriver
from selenium.webdriver.common.by import By
from selenium.webdriver.common.keys import Keys
from selenium.webdriver.firefox.service import Service

service_obj = Service(executable_path="C:/Firefox-Webdriver/geckodriver.exe")
browser = webdriver.Firefox(service=service_obj)

browser.get('http://localhost:8000/')
browser.get(url)

body = browser.find_element(By.TAG_NAME, "body")
body.send_keys(Keys.CONTROL + "a")
body.send_keys(Keys.CONTROL + "c")

Chiasma