actions.perform() in selenium only works at the first time, than it does nothing. What can be the problem?

Question

The code below is an automated CookieClicker I wrote for experimenting with ActionChains. It's based on a tutorial video, at 9:42. (Link)

When I run this code, the for loop runs down 1000 times but only 1 click happens. Multiple clicks only happen if I remove "#" from the commented line, so I run actions.click(cookie) each time. As for the video, that one extra line of code is not necessary. What can be the cause of that?

from selenium import webdriver
from selenium.webdriver.common.by import By
from selenium.webdriver.common.keys import Keys
from selenium.webdriver.chrome.service import Service
from selenium.webdriver.common.action_chains import ActionChains

s = Service("C:\Program Files (x86)\chromedriver.exe")
driver = webdriver.Chrome(service=s)

driver.maximize_window()
driver.get("https://orteil.dashnet.org/cookieclicker/")

driver.implicitly_wait(5)

cookie=driver.find_element(By.ID,"bigCookie")
cookie_count = driver.find_element(By.ID,"cookies")

actions = ActionChains(driver)
actions.click(cookie)

for i in range(1000):
    #actions.click(cookie)
    actions.perform()
    count=int(cookie_count.text.split(" ")[0])
    print(i,count)
driver.quit()

Answer 1

I assume you are using actions, for the sake of using it, or learning about it, since you could simply call cookie.click() to get the desired result.

Actions are used when you need to perform some "action" to an element other than find it or click on it, i.e. you want to right click, or click and hold, or send a keystroke combination and so on. Check Selenium Actions for more info.

As for using actions to click, you need to also understand that perform gets the composite object (call the build function of Actions) of your actions and execute them. Since your actions are declared outside the for loop, after the first click, the perform() function has no more actions to perform.

TLDR:
Either remove the comment of actions.click(cookie) inside your for loop or use cookie.click() to get the same result without using actions.

for i in range(10):
    actions.click(cookie)
    actions.perform()
    #cookie.click()
    count=int(cookie_count.text.split(" ")[0])
    print(i,count)

driver.quit() 

Colab Notebook of it working

Answer 2

The ActionChains implementation

ActionChains can be used in a chain pattern. When you call methods for actions on the ActionChains object, the actions are stored in a queue in the ActionChains object. When you call perform(), the events are fired in the order they are queued up.

---

perform()

Performs all stored actions.

---

Conclusion

perform() would fire the events stored in the queue. In your usecase, the actions.click(cookie) is the event.

Your optimal code block will be:

driver.get("https://orteil.dashnet.org/cookieclicker/")
cookie_count = WebDriverWait(driver, 20).until(EC.visibility_of_element_located((By.CSS_SELECTOR, "#cookies")))
cookie = WebDriverWait(driver, 20).until(EC.element_to_be_clickable((By.CSS_SELECTOR, "#bigCookie")))
for i in range(100):
    ActionChains(driver).click(cookie).perform()
    count = cookie_count.text.split(" ")[0]
    print(i,count)
driver.quit()

Console Output:

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