Hi,
I’ve been sending keys to fill in a field that usually if you tap into it on the device is cleared as soon as you tap into it, but with Appium i click into the field and then .send_keys “test” and it just appends it onto the pre-filled text. How do I clear it? I’ve tried a couple of methods but so far nothing works.
Grateful for any help
You can try using the .clear method like:
element.clear
as in
tag("android.widget.EditText").clear
On android it tends to raise an exception although it clears the text, so you need to handle that.
You alternatively can do a method with
press_keycode 67 #delete key
for example you collect the current text size on your element and you send that amount of delete keys with the element previously selected.
Just play around 
Well.clear just caused the error without clearing the text 'info: [debug] Responding to client with error: {“status”:13,“value”:{“message”:“An unknown server-side error occurred while processing the command.”,“origValue”:“Clear text not successful.”},“sessionId”:“d173ba2b-ae41-45cf-8c24-4049e5e77363”}
info: ← POST /wd/hub/session/d173ba2b-ae41-45cf-8c24-4049e5e77363/element/9/clear 500 12002.831 ms - 195 ’
Off to try the other method!
Well that didn’t work either - and if i attempt to just directly fill the field in without clearing
Finding methods on class: class com.android.uiautomator.core.UiAutomatorBridge
info: [debug] [BOOTSTRAP] [debug] Clearing text not successful falling back to UiAutomator method clear
info: [debug] [BOOTSTRAP] [debug] clearText not successful, continuing with setText anyway
info: [debug] [BOOTSTRAP] [debug] Sending plain text to element: Please enter your surnametest
The ‘Please enter your surname’ is the pre-filled text that’s meant to be cleared but it’s almost like it’s picking it up as an input somehow.
Scratches head.
Post your code please
#wait { find_element(:xpath, “//android.widget.LinearLayout[1]/android.widget.FrameLayout[1]/android.widget.ViewSwitcher[1]/android.widget.FrameLayout[1]/android.widget.ScrollView[1]/android.widget.RelativeLayout[1]/android.widget.RelativeLayout[2]/android.widget.EditText[1]”).click }
wait { find_element(:xpath, “//android.widget.LinearLayout[1]/android.widget.FrameLayout[1]/android.widget.ViewSwitcher[1]/android.widget.FrameLayout[1]/android.widget.ScrollView[1]/android.widget.RelativeLayout[1]/android.widget.RelativeLayout[2]/android.widget.EditText[1]”).send_keys “test” }
Actually - i think the press_keycode 67 method will work, thanks Telmo.
Nope - looks like as soon as the text is deleted is goes back to being pre-populated,
this the error i’m seeing
info: [debug] [BOOTSTRAP] [debug] Clearing text not successful using selectAllDelete now trying to send delete keys.
info: [debug] [BOOTSTRAP] [debug] Finding methods on class: class com.android.uiautomator.core.UiAutomatorBridge
info: [debug] [BOOTSTRAP] [debug] Clearing text not successful falling back to UiAutomator method clear
info: [debug] [BOOTSTRAP] [debug] clearText not successful, continuing with setText anyway
info: [debug] [BOOTSTRAP] [debug] Sending plain text to element: Please enter your surnametest
ok - so this suggests it’s a known issue: https://github.com/appium/appium/issues/3543 which was fixed in 1.2.2 - off to give that a try!
fixed in version 1.2.3 not 1.2.2
This is happening with me even when running from the source 
The same exception as you mentioned here:
try upgrading to to 1.3.1 - also be aware that you might have to stick a couple of empty spaces after entering text.
I am running from source so it should have the latest changes…
from master - yup guess it should have those fixes, very strange. I upgraded using the dmg and that got rid of the error for me.
I think this is a bug and we need to report it on Github to be fixed ??
I think it was mentioned here on Github for 1.2.2 - maybe update? https://github.com/appium/appium/issues/3543
I updated it with the error details. Hopefully they open and fix it soon
Just to update , clear fails in case text field has multi strings.
It will only work for single string text input.
One case use type method if text field has multiple strings.
I have created a method and this works fine…although exploring more on the possibilities…
public void clear(String locatorType, String locator, long… waitSeconds)
{
WebElement we = getElementWhenPresent(getByLocator(locatorType, locator), waitSeconds);
String text = we.getText();
int maxChars = text.length();
for (int i = 0; i < maxChars; i++)
((AppiumDriver)driver).sendKeyEvent(67);
}
That appears to be a simpler solution than the one I came up with. I had tried yours, but I found that
a) I couldn’t be guaranteed that when I made that text the focus, I was guaranteed that the cursor was at the end of the text
b) I haven’t found a way to determine the location with the string where the cursor is focused. If I just send delete (67) text.length times, it may not delete the entire string.
Here is my solution
def clear_text_field(field)
begin
field.clear
rescue Selenium::WebDriver::Error::UnknownError
clear_field_forcefully field
end
# Manually delete each character from the text field
#
# @param <object> element field from Appium
def clear_field_forcefully(field)
# Get into the text field
field.click
# Move left one spot to avoid having "grayed out" text count as actual
# text when the field is empty IFF we clicked at the end of the field
# and only have text to the left to delete
appium_driver.driver.press_keycode KEYCODES[:dpad_left]
current_text = field.text.length
# Delete characters to the left until we are at the start
begin
prev_text = current_text
appium_driver.driver.press_keycode KEYCODES[:delete]
current_text = field.text
end until (current_text == prev_text)
# Delete all characters to the right
len = current_text.length
1.upto(len) do
appium_driver.driver.press_keycode KEYCODES[:dpad_right]
appium_driver.driver.press_keycode KEYCODES[:delete]
end
end
It’s not my favorite solution, but it’s handled all devices we’ve tested so far.