Failed: sendKeysToActiveElement error while invoking sendKeys to ENTER and other keystrokes using ChromeDriver Chrome with Protractor

Question

My Protractor tests that use sendKeys to press Enter or Tab failed today after I was auto-updated to Chrome 76.

This worked find yesterday on Chrome 75.

This is the code that used to work:

browser.actions().sendKeys(protractor.Key.TAB).perform();

The error message is

Failed: sendKeysToActiveElement 
Build info: version: '3.141.59', revision: 'e82be7d358', time: '2018-11-14T08:25:53'
    System info: host: 'DESKTOP-6JGLC4V', ip: '192.168.0.5', os.name: 'Windows 10', os.arch: 'x86', os.version: '10.0', java.version: '1.8.0_221'
    Driver info: driver.version: unknown

Our Angular application has drop-down menus where you have to click outside of the drop-down or press the Tab key to close it. So I'm not sending the key stroke to an input element. I've tried $('body').sendKeys(protractor.Key.TAB); but that doesn't seem to work.

Answer 1

This error message...

Failed: sendKeysToActiveElement 

...implies that the ChromeDriver was unable to invoke sendKeys() to the ActiveElement.

This issue started to surface when ChromeDriver / Chrome switched over to W3C support.

@AutomatedTester in the discussion UnsupportedOperationError: sendKeysToActiveElement with sendkeys mentions, this may be an issue within the Actions class within the Client bindings.

There should be a little shim in the bindings that make sure the same functionality is given on older commands that have been removed. This has been implemented in the core selenium binding.

• The Python example:

  def send_keys(self, *keys_to_send):
  """
  Sends keys to current focused element.
  :Args:
   - keys_to_send: The keys to send.  Modifier keys constants can be found in the
     'Keys' class.
  """
  typing = keys_to_typing(keys_to_send)
  if self._driver.w3c:
      for key in typing:
      self.key_down(key)
      self.key_up(key)
  else:
      self._actions.append(lambda: self._driver.execute(
      Command.SEND_KEYS_TO_ACTIVE_ELEMENT, {'value': typing}))
  return self
  
  def send_keys_to_element(self, element, *keys_to_send):
  """
  Sends keys to an element.
  :Args:
   - element: The element to send keys.
   - keys_to_send: The keys to send.  Modifier keys constants can be found in the
     'Keys' class.
  """
  self.click(element)
  self.send_keys(*keys_to_send)
  return self
  

---

Solution

@barancev have already merged the required changes through the commit Renaming back 'py' directory, use of 'legacy_create_init' argument and this issue would get completely resolved with the next release of ChromeDriver v77.0 / Chrome v77.0.

The good news is ChromeDriver v77.0 is already released containing the following fixes. From the Release Notes of ChromeDriver v77.0:

• Resolved issue 2975: Webdriver Actions for keys (CONTROL, SHIFT etc..) not working in ChromeDriver 75.0.3770.8 [Pri-2]
• Resolved issue 2981: Chromedriver in W3C mode loses mouse state between Actions API calls [Pri-2]

---

Outro

Protractor.Key.Enter is not working in ChromeDriver v75.0.3770.8

Answer 2

Upgraded to chromeDriver 77 and still running into the same issue as mentioned above. await elem.sendKeys(protractor.Key.TAB); also tried: await browser.actions().sendKeys(protractor.Key.TAB).perform();

`- Failed: sendKeysToActiveElement
  Build info: version: '3.141.59', revision: 'e82be7d358', time: '2018-11-14T08:25:53'
  System info: host: 'GC02XYZ...', ip: 'fe80:xyz...', os.name: 'Mac OS X', os.arch: 'x86_64', os.version: '10.13.6', java.version: '11.0.1'
  Driver info: driver.version: unknown`

`chromeDriver -v
ChromeDriver 77.0.3865.40`

Answer 3

When using chrome 74+ please add the below at configuration.js file

exports.config = {
    seleniumAddress : 'http://localhost:4444/wd/hub',
    specs: ['spec.js'],
    capabilities:{
        'browserName': 'chrome',
        'goog:chromeOptions': {
            w3c: false
        }
    }

};

Notes: refer the this link https://github.com/angular/protractor/issues/5274#issuecomment-522258213