Automating a javascript button click

Question

So I have a button with code like this:

<div style="text-indent: 0pt; visibility: inherit;" id="button5061">
    <a title="Continue" href="javascript:if(%20button5061.hasOnUp%20)%20button5061.onUp()" name="button5061anc">
        <img width="82" height="25" border="0" style="cursor: pointer;" alt="Continue" src="images/continueoff.gif" name="button5061Img">
    </a>
</div>

And I need to click it with javascript. Right now I am using the firefox extension Chickenfoot which allows me to script the site with a javascript interpreter with some custom commands.

http://groups.csail.mit.edu/uid/chickenfoot/api.html

I have tried selecting it with xPath (//div/a[@title='Continue']/..) which finds it, but when I click() it nothing happens. Here are some of the things I have tried:

click(find(new XPath("//img[@alt='Continue']/..")))
click(find(new XPath("//img[@alt='Continue']/../..")))
click("continue")
click("Continue")
click("images/continueoff.gif")
click("continueoff.gif")
click(find("Continue"))
click(find("Continue").element)
click(find("images/continueoff.gif"))

I know this is a rather specific quesiton but any ideas on what to try would be much appreciated.

score 14 · Accepted Answer · answered Mar 03 '18 at 12:50

html:

<div>
    <a href="#" onclick="alert('ok')">
        <img src="">
    </a>
</div>

javascript:

var xPathRes = document.evaluate ('//div[1]/a[1]', document, null, XPathResult.FIRST_ORDERED_NODE_TYPE, null);
xPathRes.singleNodeValue.click();

jsfiddle:

https://jsfiddle.net/7fm89aqd/

score 4 · Answer 2 · answered Apr 11 '11 at 19:09

4

If you're trying to simulate a user clicking on it:

You can simulate a click like this: document.getElementById('theSubmitButton').click();

Here's an example for ya: http://jsfiddle.net/gasWZ/1/

If that's not what you're trying to do, could you explain a bit more?

answered Apr 11 '11 at 19:09

penguinrob

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Unfortunately in my particular case the button's ID changes as the pages I am trying to automate are auto generated. That might work if there were a way to select the button by it's title or the image's alt tag, but I am unable to find any getElementByAttribute or similar to do this. – madmod Apr 11 '11 at 19:17
Hmm, I'm not sure how you'd do that. Is there some attribute that the button will always have? – penguinrob Apr 11 '11 at 19:21
`

` I replaced the parts that change with underscores. I tried selecting it with document.getElementById('button5061').getElementsByTagName('a')[0].click() in your jsfiddle document using my code for the button instead but nothing happens. – madmod Apr 11 '11 at 19:27
Wow, that's a long tag. :-) For the a>name, what will be in the underscores? numbers, letters, etc. – penguinrob Apr 11 '11 at 19:37
Try using a regular expression in your jQuery selector to select the a, then click it: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/190253/jquery-selector-regular-expressions – penguinrob Apr 11 '11 at 19:38

score 2 · Answer 3 · edited Aug 21 '12 at 15:15

Wouldn't it be effective to pass the anchor object to your function and evaluate the name attribute?

set the href attribute to #
call the function and pass the obj

<div style="text-indent: 0pt; visibility: inherit;" id="button____"> <a title="Continue" href="#" name="button____anc"> <img width="82" height="25" border="0" style="cursor: pointer;" alt="Continue" src="images/continueoff.gif" name="button____Img"> </a> </div>

Automating a javascript button click

3 Answers3