How to press Ctrl+A to select all content in a page by Selenium WebDriver using Java

Question

I want to select all content by pressing Ctrl+a from keyboard by using WebDriver with Java. I wrote the following code:

Actions actionObj = new Actions(driver);
actionObj.keyDown(Keys.CONTROL)
         .sendKeys(Keys.chord("A"))
         .keyUp(Keys.CONTROL)
         .perform();

Unfortunately, it did not work. What's the wrong in my WebDriver Java code?

Answer 1

To select the whole page:

driver.findElement(By.xpath("//body")).sendKeys(Keys.chord(Keys.CONTROL, "a"));

cssSelector is faster than xpath. So it could be done by using CSSPath also. Below is the way:

driver.findElement(By.cssSelector("body")).sendKeys(Keys.chord(Keys.CONTROL, "a"));

Answer 2

Try to chord the Ctrl+A keys. The code below is working in my case:

element.sendKeys(Keys.chord(Keys.CONTROL, "a"));

Answer 3

Mac users should use Cmnd instead of Control:

element.sendKeys(Keys.chord(Keys.COMMAND, "a"));