Clear text from textarea with selenium

Question

I ve got some tests where I m checking that the proper error message appears when text in certain fields are invalid   One check for validity is that a certain textarea element is not empty   If this textarea already has text in it  how can I tell selenium to clear the field   something like   driver get element by id  foo   clear field

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It is general syntax  driver find element by id  Locator value   clear    driver find element by name  Locator value   clear

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I ran into a field where  clear   did not work  Using a combination of the first two answers worked for this field   from selenium webdriver common keys import Keys      your code  I was using python 3   driver find element by id  foo   send keys Keys CONTROL    a    driver find element by id  foo   send keys Keys DELETE

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driver find element by xpath  quot path quot   send keys Keys CONTROL   u  ue003    worked great with FireFox  u  ue003  is a BACK SPACE for those like me - never remembering it

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In the most recent Selenium version  use   driver find element by id  foo   clear

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With a simple call of clear   it appears in the DOM that the corresponding input textarea component still has its old value  so any following changes on that component  e g  filling the component with a new value  will not be processed in time   If you take a look in the selenium source code you ll find that the clear  -method is documented with the following comment          If this element is a text entry element  this will clear the value  Has no effect on other elements  Text entry elements are INPUT and TEXTAREA elements  Note that the events fired by this event may not be as you d expect   In particular  we don t fire any keyboard or mouse events   If you want to ensure keyboard events are fired  consider using something like   link  sendKeys CharSequence      with the backspace key  To ensure you get a change event  consider following with a call to   link  sendKeys CharSequence      with the tab key       So using this helpful hint to clear an input textarea  component that already has a value  AND assign a new value to it  you ll get some code like the following    public void waitAndClearFollowedByKeys By by  CharSequence keys        LOG debug  clearing element        wait by  true  clear        sendKeys by  Keys BACK SPACE toString     keys      public void sendKeys By by  CharSequence keysToSend        WebElement webElement   wait by  true       LOG info  sending keys      to      escapeProperly keysToSend   by       webElement sendKeys keysToSend       LOG info  keys sent       private String escapeProperly CharSequence keysToSend        String result        keysToSend      result   result replace Keys TAB     t        result   result replace Keys ENTER     n        result   result replace Keys RETURN     r         return result      Sorry for this code being Java and not Python  Also  I had to skip out an additional  waitUntilPageIsReady  -method that would make this post way too long   Hope this helps you on your journey with Selenium

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Option a  If you want to ensure keyboard events are fired  consider using sendKeys CharSequence   Example 1   from selenium webdriver common keys import Keys         webElement sendKeys Keys CONTROL    quot a quot     webElement sendKeys Keys DELETE    Example 2   from selenium webdriver common keys import Keys         webElement sendKeys Keys BACK SPACE     do repeatedly  e g  in while loop  WebElement There are many ways to get the required WebElement  e g    driver find element by id driver find element by xpath driver find element  Option b   webElement clear     If this element is a text entry element  this will clear the value  Note that the events fired by this event may not be  as you d expect  In particular  we don t fire any keyboard or mouse events

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driver find element by id  foo   clear

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for java   driver findelement By id  foo   clear      or  webElement clear      If this element is a text entry element  this will clear the value

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In my experience  this turned out to be the most efficient driver find element by css selector  foo   send keys u  ue009    u  ue003    We are sending Ctrl   Backspace to delete all characters from the input  you can also replace backspace with delete  EDIT  removed Keys dependency

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