How to provide input to a webView input field programmatically in Android Kitkat (4.4)

Question

I need to provide input to a webview input control programmatically. For that I was using webView.dispatchKeyEvent() and it worked fine till Android 4.3 version but it is not working in 4.4 version (Kitkat - Chromium webView).

I see the below statements in the logcat:

W/UnimplementedWebViewApi(9737): Unimplemented WebView method onKeyMultiple called from: android.webkit.WebView.onKeyMultiple(WebView.java:2179)

I have tried dispatchKeyEvent(), onKeyDown() but nothing is working for Chromium webView in 4.4, please can someone let me know if there is a way to send input to webView fields programmatically.

Please note that I am looking for a generic solution for any webpage (Eg: username and password fields in Facebook URL) where I don't know the name/id of the input control so cant use a simple Javascript method for loading input.

Answer 1

You can use the Instrumentation class for this. I've tested it with Android 4.4 and it works.

First ensure that the WebView has focus, then call sendCharacterSync() to send individual key events. Note that these calls must be done from a background thread (this is mandatory).

For example:

final Instrumentation instrumentation = new Instrumentation();

new Thread(new Runnable()
{
    @Override
    public void run()
    {
        instrumentation.sendCharacterSync(KeyEvent.KEYCODE_H);
        instrumentation.sendCharacterSync(KeyEvent.KEYCODE_I);
        instrumentation.sendCharacterSync(KeyEvent.KEYCODE_TAB);
        instrumentation.sendCharacterSync(KeyEvent.KEYCODE_T);
        instrumentation.sendCharacterSync(KeyEvent.KEYCODE_H);
        instrumentation.sendCharacterSync(KeyEvent.KEYCODE_E);
        instrumentation.sendCharacterSync(KeyEvent.KEYCODE_R);
        instrumentation.sendCharacterSync(KeyEvent.KEYCODE_E);
    }
}).start();

The only issue is that you get a "typewriter" effect (i.e. the letters appear one by one, not all at once).