Forum Discussion

mateenhussain's avatar
mateenhussain
Occasional Contributor
15 years ago

Clear text before doing Send Keys

Hi I am trying to edit a textbox. At first I used testObj.wText property to set text on the textbox. But I had to move to testObj.SendKeys() method as wText didnt work on all platforms, due ...
kirk_bottomley's avatar
kirk_bottomley
Contributor

Nice one, Hagai.

 

I've got one in JScript I use before sending keys to a text object. Pass in whatever property you want to search for the text field with (I usually use Name, frequently with wildcards), the parameter, and the process. It also has to be a visible object.

function ClearTextObject(ByProperty, Parameter, ProcessName)
{
var PropArray, ValuesArray, Process, Target;
var Depth = 5;
  
PropArray = new Array(ByProperty, "Visible");
ValuesArray = new Array(Parameter, true);

Process = Sys.Process(ProcessName);
Target = Process.FindChild(PropArray, ValuesArray, Depth);

try
{
  if (Target.Exists)
  {
    var Text = Target.Text;
    var Length = Text.length;
    
    Target.Click();
    Target.Keys("[End]");
    
    Indicator.PushText("Backspacing the text away.");
    for (i = 0; i < Length; i++)
    {
      Target.Keys("[BS]");
    }
    Indicator.PopText();
  }
  else
    Log.Error("The object was not found.");
}
    
catch (err)
 {
  Log.Error(err.description)
 }
}
jsc's avatar
jsc
Regular Contributor
10 years ago

you can try

Obj.Keys("^aMyText")

so all text is selected (^a) and replaced withy "MyText"

 

Or Obj.SetText("MyText")

  • Colin_McCrae's avatar
    Colin_McCrae
    Community Hero
    10 years ago

    I would go with one of the methods that selects all and/or deletes/overwrites the text, and uses keys.

     

    Personally, I think using methods such as "Clear" and "Value" and "SetText" are all bad. Reason being, your automated test is supposed to simulate a user. The user cannot invoke any of these methods. If you use them in your automated test, you are potentially going to miss defects as you are not using the application in the same way the user does.

     

    Also, using these methods may not activate event triggers which should activate when "Keys" is used.

     

    Thats my take on it anyway. Always emulate the user. Don't use methods the user can't get to just because it makes life easier. Thats not a proper test.