Selenium click not always working

Question

I have some tests which click on a tab, however the click is not always performed.

The xpath is correct as most of the times the test works
It is not a timing issue as I ve used thread.sleep() and other methods to ensure that the element is visible before clicking
The test believes that it is performing the click as it is not throwing an ElementNotFoundException or any other exceptions when 'performing' the click. The test fails later on after the click since the tab content would not have changed.

Further Info I am using Selenium 2.44.0 to implement tests in Java which run on Chrome 44.0.2403.107 m.

Is there something else that I can do or could this be an issue with selenium?

jeremy -chrom v44 has known issues with click events and various sendkey combinations (in other words, it;s fairly useless). there has been lots of chatter about this, as this is the 1st time that chrome has majorly slipped in this respect. many of my tests are faling now too and I didn't realise the issue and was adding a whole new bundle of Waits until I discovered that there was a problem with v44 -hope this helps — jim tollan, Jul 30 '15 at 17:03
Thank you for your reply. I guess we'll have to wait for a new version of chrome then. — Jeremy Borg, Aug 05 '15 at 14:15

score 31 · Answer 1 · answered Jul 30 '15 at 13:25

31

There are several things you can try:

an Explicit elementToBeClickable Wait:

WebDriverWait wait = new WebDriverWait(webDriver, 10);

WebElement button = wait.until(ExpectedConditions.elementToBeClickable(By.id("myid")));
button.click()

move to element before making a click:

Actions actions = new Actions(driver);
actions.moveToElement(button).click().build().perform();

make the click via javascript:

JavascriptExecutor js = (JavascriptExecutor)driver;
js.executeScript("arguments[0].click();", button);

answered Jul 30 '15 at 13:25

alecxe

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2

alec, really nioce summary of the various approaches - plus one! – jim tollan Jul 30 '15 at 17:04
2

None of these approaches work for me. Except js method, the click is registered on the element and the element is highlighted by a dotted border after being clicked. But, nothing happens. When i click the same button manually, then the click works. – MasterJoe Mar 25 '17 at 01:33
2

The suggestions from @sumitkumarpradhan are `driver.findElement(button).sendKeys(Keys.RETURN);` and `driver.findElement(button).sendKeys(Keys.ENTER);`, if you don't feel like clicking links. – brandones May 05 '20 at 23:40
any ideas why the first and the second solutions does not work always (i created a while loop and it only works in 95%) but the last always works? In my case it is the first click right after the page is loaded, might it be a chrome bug? – wutzebaer Dec 17 '20 at 22:55
@wutzebaer the reason why the last one always works is that it is a programmatic way of achieving the same thing..I do prefer using this approach if I am using selenium for data gathering and not testing.. – alecxe Dec 17 '20 at 22:57

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Jul 30 '15 at 13:29

1

you can go with linkText if the tab name contains any unique string. And make sure your tab is not dynamic. It should be visible in source code(manual source code(ctrl+u)).

answered Jul 30 '15 at 13:29

Aditya Byreddy

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score 1 · Answer 3 · edited Feb 04 '19 at 17:15

1

The following method work for me

WebElement button = SeleniumTools.findVisibleElement(By.cssSelector("#cssid"));

Actions actions = new Actions(driver);

actions.moveToElement(button).click().build().perform();

edited Feb 04 '19 at 17:15

Abhinav Sood

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6
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answered Feb 04 '19 at 16:26

Vilo C

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score 1 · Answer 4 · answered Feb 09 '22 at 22:37

I have a similar problem. Tried all solutions from the top answer. Sometimes they work, sometimes don't.

But running code in an infinite loop works always.

For example, we need to click on element-two which is not visible until element-one is clicked.

WebDriverWait wait = new WebDriverWait(webDriver, 10);
while (true){
    try {
        WebElement elementOne = 
              wait.until(ExpectedConditions.elementToBeClickable(By.id("element-one")));
        elementOne.click();
        WebElement elementTwo = 
              wait.until(ExpectedConditions.elementToBeClickable(By.id("element-two")));
        elementTwo.click();
        break;
    } catch (Exception e){
        //log
    }

}

score 0 · Answer 5 · answered Jan 30 '23 at 20:43

I have a similar problem. Here is my solution:

table_button = driver.find_element(By.XPATH, insert your xpath)
try:
    WebDriverWait(driver, 15).until(EC.element_to_be_clickable(table_button)).click()
except WebDriverException as e:
    print('failed')
    print(e)

Through code above, you can find the error message if your button is not clickable.

For example, my error message is 'nosuchelement' and 'clcik is not clickable', then I got back to check the table_button.accessible_name, found it print a 'null' value, so that means my XPATH is incorrect.

Selenium click not always working

5 Answers5

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