When we use our phones, we & # x27; re not always just interacting with UI elements inside an app. Mobile device, peculiarly Android devices, have an array of physical buttons and key that often play a role in modulating device province or navigating through apps. It & # x27; s important to test the use of these keys in your app, but sometimes it & # x27; s just plain convenient to be able to use them.

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Luckily, Appium gives you unmediated access to these special functions via the AndroidKeyEventlibrary, do available to Appium users with thepressKey method. What areKeyEvents? They & # x27; re Android scheme events triggered when users exhort various key or buttons, and come in three parts:

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1. The keycode of the pressed key
2. Any meta state info (meta state tally to meta key be pressed, such as ALT or CTRL)
3. Any flags (flags are set by the scheme, such as whether the key event originated from the soft keyboard)

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Appium enables us to actuallygenerateKeyEvents, making the system (and thus any apps under tryout) conceive that a user really triggered the events. We can construct KeyEvents with each of the three ingredient above (keycode, metastate, and flag). In most suit, we don & # x27; t need to care about the metastate or flag, but of course this will depend on what your app is listening for.

Also cheque:

In the simplest case, we can only call thepressKey method (which exists only onAndroidDriverof line, since KeyEvents are specific to Android:

driver.pressKey (keyEvent);

But how do we construct thekeyEvent argument? It must be of typeKeyEvent, and at a minimum we have to provide a keycode, which is an integer (represented as theAndroidKeyenum for the Java client). So, let & # x27; s say we wanted to simulate a chink of the ironware & quot; Back & quot; push on some Android devices. We can just write:

driver.pressKey (new KeyEvent (AndroidKey.BACK));

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And the device will conduct as though we & # x27; ve trigger the & quot; Back & quot; push! Though it wouldn & # x27; t make sense in this event, we could also have add a metastate to the KeyEvent:

new KeyEvent (AndroidKey.BACK) .withMetaModifier (KeyEventMetaModifier.SHIFT_ON);

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What if we want to powerfulness off the device? We & # x27; ll need more thanpressKey since it & # x27; s required to hold the power button for a long time. We could instead try the appropriately-namedlongPressKey method

driver.longPressKey (new KeyEvent (AndroidKey.POWER));

And that & # x27; s all there is to it! The existent deception lies in witness everything you experience entree to apply the KeyEvent interface. To see the full lean of potential keycodes, simply see theAndroid KeyEvent docsand scroll down through the huge list of constant. You & # x27; ve got everything from alphanumeric keys to media controls. I & # x27; m sure some of you will find some interesting uses for this API that the rest of us never take! Be certain to let me know if you do.

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