how to handle
obscuring other elements with selenium, checked other answers nothing helped

Question

I'm trying to automate a web application with selenium java and this is the message I keep getting org.openqa.selenium.ElementClickInterceptedException: Element is not clickable at point (85,37) because another element obscures it in all the browsers.

I tried all the waits, explicit wait for 20 seconds seems to work but often it fails too. Also, this is happening before almost every element on the application and I think applying explicit wait or Thread.sleep before every element is a good practice.

    driver.findElement(By.xpath("//span[contains(text(),'Agent Corrections')]")).click();

    WebDriverWait wait1 = new WebDriverWait(driver, 20);
    wait1.until(ExpectedConditions.invisibilityOfElementLocated(By.id("preloader")));

    String expectedText = "";
    String actualText = driver.findElement(By.cssSelector("#users_management > div.panel-heading > h4")).getText();
    Assert.assertEquals(expectedText, actualText);

    driver.findElement(By.xpath("//span[contains(text(),'')]")).click();

    driver.findElement(By.xpath("//span[contains(text(),'')]")).click();

    wait1.until(ExpectedConditions.invisibilityOfElementLocated(By.id("preloader")));
    driver.findElement(By.id("pcc")).sendKeys("");
    driver.findElement(By.id("pnr")).sendKeys("");
    driver.findElement(By.id("FFFormSubmit")).click();

    wait1.until(ExpectedConditions.invisibilityOfElementLocated(By.id("preloader")));

element obscuring is with div id = preloader

You can also check for individual elements to be visible/clickable/interactable before using them. This would be in place of checking for absence of the overlay — DMart, Sep 05 '19 at 17:23
Unfortunately i cannot give you the page URL cause it's under the organisation. However, when I use anything else instead of "invisibility of element located" in explicit wait, it fails. It could also be the issue of the web application not being stable. — kjSel, Sep 05 '19 at 18:11
20+ second wait for every element sounds like a serious issue. Are you uploading large files? — pcalkins, Sep 05 '19 at 19:11
No, there are no files. Plus i talked to one of the developers and he ignored the issue by saying this problem is because his code is back end and my script is front end. Searched a lot but couldn't find a solution for this. — kjSel, Sep 05 '19 at 19:21
Odd response, but this does seem like a front-end script problem. Can you post the script for displaying/closing the preloader div? Sounds like that's waiting for something to happen and it's hitting a timeout or something. — pcalkins, Sep 10 '19 at 18:34
This is the preloader element and till now i found only explicit wait to resolve this, however i cannot say it's resolved cause most of the times it fails — kjSel, Sep 11 '19 at 19:06

score 0 · Accepted Answer · answered Sep 05 '19 at 16:25

0

I would first check if the preloader is displayed and then wait for its invisibility. This probably makes the execution bit slower, but it is fail safe.

driver.manage().timeouts().implicitlyWait(5,TimeUnit.SECONDS) // this will make wait time of 5 seconds for each element including preloader.

WebDriverWait wait1 = new WebDriverWait(driver, 20);
 if(driver.findElement(By.id("preloader")).isDisplayed())
{    wait1.until(ExpectedConditions.invisibilityOfElementLocated(By.id("preloader")));
}

answered Sep 05 '19 at 16:25

Sureshmani Kalirajan

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I've tried this technique before, but it's not fail safe. With timing you may never find it displayed and then this will break. – DMart Sep 05 '19 at 17:21
yes. it depends on the application and wait time may need to be adjusted. – Sureshmani Kalirajan Sep 05 '19 at 17:31
This works faster than my approach, but then again the issue is that exception comes before every element when the page loads. And Thread.sleep is not a good approach to apply before every element cause if I have a larger test script it would take ages for it to be completed. – kjSel Sep 05 '19 at 18:12
You shouldn't mix implicit waits with explicit waits. – DMart Sep 06 '19 at 18:59

how to handle obscuring other elements with selenium, checked other answers nothing helped

1 Answers1

how to handle
obscuring other elements with selenium, checked other answers nothing helped