[Question] Is there a way to control a TextInput's selection?

[goodspark]

Question

I'm building a small chat app and what I'd like is to have it always autofocus on the text input whenever I start typing, even if I'm not focused on the text input (because there's really no other place to input text). But I don't want to always auto focus the input when it gets blurred (bc I might want to actually select something in the chat log).

I'm doing this programmatically by keeping track of whether the input is focused¹, adding a keyboard event listener to the page, and (if the chat input isn't focused) sending input keys to the input and focusing it.

However, since the text input field automatically selects everything inside when it obtains focus, this means the 1st character is always overwritten if I type anything more.

1. Type: "123"
2. "1" is sent to input and then input is focused
3. "1" is auto-selected
4. "23" replaces "1" in the input

This also happens even if I focus first, update the page, and then send the first character. It always gets selected anyway. It'd be nice if I could programmatically tell the text input "focus but don't auto select". Or, let focusing and value setting happen separately. I notice if I click on the input, it doesn't auto-select the text. I wonder if that code can be used?

Python 3.12
flet 0.28.3

Sort of related: #1891

Code sample

from flet import (
    Column,
    Container,
    ControlEvent,
    KeyboardEvent,
    Page,
    Row,
    Text,
    TextField,
    app,
)


def my_app(page: Page):
    text_log = Container(Column([Text("blahblah"), Text("hello")]))
    input_focused = True

    def on_input_blur(ev: ControlEvent):
        nonlocal input_focused
        input_focused = False

    def on_input_focus(ev: ControlEvent):
        nonlocal input_focused
        input_focused = True

    text_input = TextField(
        expand=True,
        autofocus=True,
        on_focus=on_input_focus,
        on_blur=on_input_blur,
    )

    def on_key_event(ev: KeyboardEvent):
        if not input_focused and len(ev.key) == 1:
            k = ev.key
            text_input.value = (text_input.value or "") + k
            text_input.focus()
            page.update()

    page.window.width = 500
    page.window.height = 400
    page.on_keyboard_event = on_key_event
    page.add(Row([text_log]), Row([text_input]))


app(my_app)

Error message

No response

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• I have searched for answers to my question both in the issues and in previous discussions.

Footnotes

1. Side note- it would be nice if Flet had a property for this instead of having to manage that flag myself by tracking focus/blur events. ↩