How to force Selenium to open a link in a new window?

Question

I need to open a link on a webpage in a new Chrome Window. There was already a question but this appears to be for RC. I tried driver.getUserWindow().open("http....."); But it is not working. May be there is a way to force Chrome to do that for all links? Ideally, i would like to know how to force a driver to open a link in a new window. (i am using java and OS Windows 7

Answer 1

You can use Actions class to perform this.

Actions act = new Actions(driver);
WebElement onElement = Your element on which action has to be performed;
act.contextClick(onElement).perform();
act.sendKeys("w").perform();  // If you want the link to open in new tab then use T instead of w

Hope this helps. Happy coding.

Answer 2

I don't know what language/OS you use, but here is how you can open link in new window on OS X with Ruby and WebDriver:

link = driver.find_element(:tag_name => 'a')
action = driver.action
key = :command # replace with :control on Win/Linux
action.key_down(key)
action.click(link)
action.key_up(key)
action.perform

This will open link in new tab. If you need new window, you should use :shift key.

You can also override click method for element, so it always opens links in new window.

Answer 3

You can use the JS executor method for opening the link from new Tab

public void openFromNewTab(WebElement element) {

    ((JavascriptExecutor) driver).executeScript("window.open('" + element.getAttribute("href") + "','_blank');");
}