selenium - What does WebElement.clear() Do to TextBoxes?

Question

I've recently run into a problem working with selenium where calling clear() on a custom text box causes issues when entering text later in the test. The text box does check for (JavaScript) browserEvents, particularly keyDown events. I tried figuring out what clear() does to see if that could be affecting things, but I can't seem to find any specifics.

The source for the Selenium Java bindings shows that clear() does not use keyboard or mouse simulation to clear away the text from the text box. So what does it do, exactly?

Answer 1

The clear() method executes an "Automation Atom", which is a JavaScript function intended to provide the smallest basic unit of automation functionality for a browser. In the case of clear(), that function sets the value property of the element to an empty string (''), then fires the onchange event on the element. The atoms function you're interested in is bot.action.clear()