Performing a copy and paste with Selenium 2

Question

Is there any way to perform a copy and paste using Selenium 2 and the Python bindings?

I've highlighted the element I want to copy and then I perform the following actions

copyActionChain.key_down(Keys.COMMAND).send_keys('C').key_up(Keys.COMMAND)

However, the highlighted text isn't copied.

Answer 1

To do this on a Mac and on PC, you can use these alternate keyboard shortcuts for cut, copy and paste. Note that some of them aren't available on a physical Mac keyboard, but work because of legacy keyboard shortcuts.

Alternate keyboard shortcuts for cut, copy and paste on a Mac

• Cut => control+delete, or control+K
• Copy => control+insert
• Paste => shift+insert, or control+Y

If this doesn't work, use Keys.META instead, which is the official key that replaces the command ? key

source: https://w3c.github.io/uievents/#keyboardevent

Here is a fully functional example:

from selenium import webdriver
from selenium.webdriver.common.keys import Keys
from selenium.webdriver.common.action_chains import ActionChains

browser = webdriver.Safari(executable_path = '/usr/bin/safaridriver')
browser.get("http://www.python.org")
elem = browser.find_element_by_name("q")
elem.clear()
actions = ActionChains(browser)
actions.move_to_element(elem)
actions.click(elem) #select the element where to paste text
actions.key_down(Keys.META)
actions.send_keys('v')
actions.key_up(Keys.META)
actions.perform() 

So in Selenium (Ruby), this would be roughly something like this to select the text in an element, and then copy it to the clipboard.

# double click the element to select all it's text
element.double_click 

# copy the selected text to the clipboard using CTRL+INSERT
element.send_keys(:control, :insert)