How to hold key down with Selenium?

We can hold a key down with Selenium webdriver. We mostly utilize the CONTROL/SHIFT/ALT keys to hold down and then click on other keys. So, only mentioning the modifier keys like keys.CONTROL/ keys.SHIFT or Keys.ALT is not sufficient.

To hold down a key simultaneously while another key is being pressed, we use the keyDown() and keyUp() methods. Both these methods accept the modifier key as a parameter.

The action of these two methods on a key yields a special functionality of a key. All these methods are a part of Actions class in Selenium. We have to add the import org.openqa.selenium.interactions.Actions package to our code for using the methods under Actions class.

Example

import org.openqa.selenium.By;
import org.openqa.selenium.Keys;
import org.openqa.selenium.WebDriver;
import org.openqa.selenium.WebElement;
import org.openqa.selenium.chrome.ChromeDriver;
import java.util.concurrent.TimeUnit;
import org.openqa.selenium.interactions.Action;
import org.openqa.selenium.interactions.Actions;

public class MetdKeyDown{
   public static void main(String[] args) {
System.setProperty("webdriver.chrome.driver","C:\Users\ghs6kor\Desktop\Java\chromedriver.exe");
      WebDriver driver = new ChromeDriver();
      String url = "https://www.tutorialspoint.com/index.htm";
      driver.get(url);
      driver.manage().timeouts().implicitlyWait(4, TimeUnit.SECONDS);
      // identify element
      WebElement l = driver.findElement(By.id("gsc-i-id1"));
      // Actions class
      Actions a = new Actions(driver);
      // moveToElement() and then click()
      a.moveToElement(l).click();
      //enter text with keyDown() SHIFT key ,keyUp() then build() ,perform()
      a.keyDown(Keys.SHIFT);
      a.sendKeys("hello").keyUp(Keys.SHIFT).build().perform();
      driver.quit()
   }
}

Output