SendKeyEvent does not work as expected

[Cereal-Killa]

Could you please confirm that SendKeyEvent is supposed to simulate a "real" key press on the page, just like pressing a key on the keyboard?

The reason I'm asking is that it partially works for me, meaning, the keys are send, be it a char or the enter key, or tab key, no problem, however... in a few pages already I noticed that it does not trigger all the field events as pressing the keys on the real keyboard.

It's not just one website that I've noticed that, let's suppose you have to enter the zip code in order to choose the city from a combo box, sendind the zip code via SendKeyEvent fills-in the field no problem but does not act like a real key press, if I happen to simply delete the last char using a real keyboard and re-type it then the field events are triggered as expected.

I noticed the issue with plain javascript websites, jquery forms and angularjs forms, on all cases the form is filled but the keys sent do not trigger the events that are bound to the controls.
What version of the product are you using?

What version are you using?
Nuget 63.0.3

On what operating system?
Windows 8.1 x64

Are you using WinForms, WPF or OffScreen?
Winforms

What steps will reproduce the problem?
See above, will try to get a demo url.

Please provide detailed information here, enough for someone else to reprodce your problem.
Please no binary (zip, etc) links, fork the MinimalExample and push your changes to GitHub. (Alternatively use a code sharing service list Gist or Pastebin).
What is the expected output? What do you see instead?

Thanks

                [DllImport("user32.dll")]
                public static extern int ToUnicode(uint virtualKeyCode, uint scanCode,
                    byte[] keyboardState,
                    [Out, MarshalAs(UnmanagedType.LPWStr, SizeConst = 64)]
                    StringBuilder receivingBuffer,
                    int bufferSize, uint flags);

        /// <summary>
        /// https://stackoverflow.com/a/6949520/450141
        /// </summary>
        static string GetCharsFromKeys(Keys keys, bool shift, bool altGr)
        {
            var buf = new StringBuilder(256);
            var keyboardState = new byte[256];
            if (shift)
                keyboardState[(int)Keys.ShiftKey] = 0xff;
            if (altGr) {
                keyboardState[(int)Keys.ControlKey] = 0xff;
                keyboardState[(int)Keys.Menu] = 0xff;
            }
            ToUnicode((uint)keys, 0, keyboardState, buf, 256, 0);
            return buf.ToString();
        }

        static void SendKeys(ChromiumWebBrowser browser)
        {
            KeyEvent[] events = new KeyEvent[] {
                new KeyEvent() { FocusOnEditableField = true, WindowsKeyCode = GetCharsFromKeys(Keys.R, false, false)[0], Modifiers = CefEventFlags.None, Type = KeyEventType.Char, IsSystemKey = false }, // Just the letter R, no shift (so no caps...?)
                new KeyEvent() { FocusOnEditableField = true, WindowsKeyCode = GetCharsFromKeys(Keys.R, true, false)[0], Modifiers = CefEventFlags.ShiftDown, Type = KeyEventType.Char, IsSystemKey = false }, // Capital R?
                new KeyEvent() { FocusOnEditableField = true, WindowsKeyCode = GetCharsFromKeys(Keys.D4, false, false)[0], Modifiers = CefEventFlags.None, Type = KeyEventType.Char, IsSystemKey = false }, // Just the number 4
                new KeyEvent() { FocusOnEditableField = true, WindowsKeyCode = GetCharsFromKeys(Keys.D4, true, false)[0], Modifiers = CefEventFlags.ShiftDown, Type = KeyEventType.Char, IsSystemKey = false }, // Shift 4 (should be $)
            };

            foreach (KeyEvent ev in events) {
                Thread.Sleep(100);
                browser.GetBrowser().GetHost().SendKeyEvent(ev);
            }
        }

[welcome]

Welcome! We prefer to keep this issue track just for bug reports. If you have a question or need help with something I'd ask that you self close this issue and have a read over https://github.com/cefsharp/CefSharp/blob/master/ISSUE_TEMPLATE.md it contains background information, details on where to ask your questions Gitter or StackOverflow) should be used.

If you're reporting a bug, you must complete the bug report template see https://github.com/cefsharp/CefSharp/blob/master/ISSUE_TEMPLATE.md#bug-report. Please make sure you provide enough detail that someone else can reproduce the issue you are experiencing.

It's also important to remember that CefSharp is just a wrapper around the Chromium Embedded Framework(CEF), a lot of questions people have aren't actually CefSharp specific, they're generic to CEF and for those CEF has it's own support forum at http://magpcss.org/ceforum/index.php and issue tracker at https://bitbucket.org/chromiumembedded/cef

[amaitland]

This seems more like a support request than an actual bug, I'll answer here though in future please remember that CefSharp is just a wrapper, methods like SendKeyEvent are wrapper functions and are part of the CEF API. I'm closing this as SendKeyEvent does nothing more than wrap the function. See https://github.com/cefsharp/CefSharp/blob/cefsharp/69/CefSharp.Core/Internals/CefBrowserHostWrapper.cpp#L213 for the actual code.

Could you please confirm that SendKeyEvent is supposed to simulate a "real" key press on the page, just like pressing a key on the keyboard?

The documentation is vague as to what actually happens see https://magpcss.org/ceforum/apidocs3/projects/(default)/CefBrowserHost.html#SendKeyEvent(constCefKeyEvent&)

If you need to know more then ask on https://magpcss.org/ceforum/index.php or look at the source.

The reason I'm asking is that it partially works for me, meaning, the keys are send, be it a char or the enter key, or tab key, no problem, however... in a few pages already I noticed that it does not trigger all the field events as pressing the keys on the real keyboard.

Sending Char is not a true representation of what happens for a key press, for simple situations it's enough to say fill out the search field on Google. Read https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/gg153546(v=vs.85).aspx for a detailed explanation.

The WPF implementation uses SendKeyEvent (it's not meant to be used in WinForms though historically has worked). You can use https://github.com/cefsharp/CefSharp.MinimalExample for testing, if the site you are using works then add some logging to the keyboard handler and determine the the sequence of key strokes that you require.

What version are you using?
Nuget 63.0.3

Version 69.0.0 is the current supported version.

[Cereal-Killa]

Thank you.