Disable Hardware Keyboard for iOS Simulator using UIAutomation

Question

I'm doing some automated tests in the iOS simulator using UIAutomation.

In Xcode 6, the iOS simulator's keyboard behavior changed to be similar to a real device, and now there is a menu item to connect/disconnect your Mac's keyboard to the simulator: Hardware > Keyboard > Connect Hardware Keyboard.

I don't mind this, but what happens when your Mac's keyboard is connected is that the simulator will no longer show the software keyboard. When you run a test script with UIAutomation, calls like UIATarget.localTarget().frontMostApp().keyboard().typeString("myString"); will fail because the keyboard doesn't appear, even when you've made a text field the first responder.

This is annoying, because if I do any manual testing in the simulator, I will need to remember to disable the hardware keyboard before I run any of my UIAutomation tests, or they will all fail.

Is there any way, from within a UIAutomation JS script, to check hardware keyboard settings and disable them? Or, any way to do this from the command line, prior to executing the UIAutomation script?

Answer 1

If I understood your question correctly, you need bulletproof way to enter text. I just use setValue for that. Like this: UIATarget.localTarget().frontMostApp().textFields().Login.setValue('sofa');

Answer 2

Updated AppleScript of Leo's answer for Xcode 11 where "Hardware" was changed to "I/O". To get this working it Xcode 11.4.1 I needed a bash script wrapper to call the AppleScript scpt file.

Files
./disable-hardware-keyboard
./disable-hardware-keyboard.scpt

tell application "Simulator"
    activate
end tell

tell application "System Events"
    set hwKB to value of attribute "AXMenuItemMarkChar" of menu item "Connect Hardware Keyboard" of menu 1 of menu item "Keyboard" of menu 1 of menu bar item "I/O" of menu bar 1 of application process "Simulator"
    if ((hwKB as string) is equal to "missing value") then
        do shell script "echo 'hardware keyboard is off'"
    else
        click menu item "Connect Hardware Keyboard" of menu 1 of menu item "Keyboard" of menu 1 of menu bar item "I/O" of menu bar 1 of application process "Simulator"
    end if
end tell

#!/bin/bash
cd $(dirname $0)
osascript disable-hardware-keyboard.scpt