How to click on a javascript/AJAX based element with onclick attribute using Selenium and Python

Question

I'm trying to click a link in a dropdown menu in Selenium.

I'm accessing the element like so:

link = menu.find_element_by_xpath('//*[contains(text(), "Mark as shipped")]')

The link's href is javascript.void(0), and contains an onclick attribute which contains:

'com.ebay.app.myebay2.lineaction.service.LineActionAjax.processTransRequest("http://payments.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?OrderAction&transId=#TID#&action=4&pagetype=1883&ssPageName=STRK:MESO:SHP&itemid=_Item_Id", "_Item_Id", "987349587", "MarkShipped", "98739873", "_Item_Id_9874987_ss", 24")'

I've tried triggering this with:

click()

and

driver.execute_script(link.get_attribute('onclick'))

Also an ActionChain mousing over the link and clicking it.

But none seem to work. How do I trigger this?

can you provide us more information about what you mean when you say "none seem to work"? do you get exceptions? do you have some indication that the action did not happen? — Breaks Software, Jan 11 '19 at 01:38

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered Dec 18 '20 at 19:12

The element is a AJAX element, so ideally to click on the element you need to induce WebDriverWait for the element_to_be_clickable() and you can use either of the following Locator Strategies:

Using PARTIAL_LINK_TEXT:

WebDriverWait(driver, 20).until(EC.element_to_be_clickable((By.PARTIAL_LINK_TEXT, "Mark as shipped"))).click()

Using CSS_SELECTOR:

WebDriverWait(driver, 20).until(EC.element_to_be_clickable((By.CSS_SELECTOR, "a[onclick*='MarkShipped']"))).click()

Using XPATH:

WebDriverWait(driver, 20).until(EC.element_to_be_clickable((By.XPATH, "//a[contains(@onclick, 'MarkShipped') and contains(., 'Mark as shipped')]"))).click()

Note: You have to add the following imports :

from selenium.webdriver.support.ui import WebDriverWait
from selenium.webdriver.common.by import By
from selenium.webdriver.support import expected_conditions as EC

How to click on a javascript/AJAX based element with onclick attribute using Selenium and Python

1 Answers1