How I can use selenium to click at web element of this javascript:_doPostBack()

Question

I wonder how I can use selenium to click on web element "automation_quiz" at this javascript:_doPostBack().

The following is a snippet from the html page:

<a id="ctl00_Content_tgv_ctl03_lbtCaption" title="click to launch automation_quiz" href="javascript:__doPostBack('ctl00$Content$tgv$ctl03$lbtCaption','')">automation_quiz</a>

I could not find the Xpath of "automation_quiz" by using firefox Xpath-finder.

This is a snippet from the html page: automation_quiz – jeff_hqh Nov 14 '20 at 00:07 — jeff_hqh, Nov 14 '20 at 00:07
//a[@id="ctl00_Content_tgv_ctl03_lbtCaption"] – pcalkins Nov 14 '20 at 00:16 — pcalkins, Nov 14 '20 at 00:16
//a[text()='automation_quiz'] – Arundeep Chohan Nov 14 '20 at 03:59 — Arundeep Chohan, Nov 14 '20 at 03:59

score -1 · Answer 1 · edited Feb 12 '21 at 13:05

The desired element is a JavaScript enabled element so to Click() on the element you have to induce WebDriverWait for the ElementToBeClickable() and you can use either of the following Locator Strategies:

LinkText:

new WebDriverWait(driver, TimeSpan.FromSeconds(10)).Until(ExpectedConditions.ElementToBeClickable(By.LinkText("automation_quiz"))).Click();

CssSelector:

new WebDriverWait(driver, TimeSpan.FromSeconds(20)).Until(ExpectedConditions.ElementToBeClickable(By.CssSelector("a[title='click to launch automation_quiz'][href*='Content'][id$='lbtCaption']"))).Click();

XPath:

new WebDriverWait(driver, TimeSpan.FromSeconds(20)).Until(ExpectedConditions.ElementToBeClickable(By.XPath("//a[@title='click to launch automation_quiz' and text()='automation_quiz']"))).Click();

References

You can find a couple of relevant detailed discussions in:

It works using CssSelector mode! Thank you very much! – jeff_hqh Nov 16 '20 at 03:00 — jeff_hqh, Nov 16 '20 at 03:00

score -3 · Answer 2 · edited Nov 14 '20 at 01:17

Unfortunately, you cannot find web elements by JavaScript methods initiated in their click with Selenium. Also unfortunate is that there is no current alternative to Selenium for navigating dynamic content. Check the documentation for other web element search methods. If you can’t find by Xpath, maybe you could locate using html ID or similar. If not, try using the ChromeDriver instead of Firefox. I’ve had much less trouble using Xpaths on chrome.

How I can use selenium to click at web element of this javascript:_doPostBack()

2 Answers2

References