How to auto click on tag using selenium (python) which calls a javascript function?

Question

How do I access and click on a button which hyperlinks to a javascript function?

html element:

<a href="javascript:Nav('-index=')" id="ctl04_ctl25_ctl00_lnk2NextPg" class="twPagerBtn right" role="button" onclick="mySpud.container.scrollIntoView();" title="Next Page" aria-label="Next Page">►</a>

My current code:

next_button='//*[@id="ctl04_ctl06_ctl00_lnk2NextPg"]'
try:
    element=WebDriverWait(driver,15).until(
        EC.presence_of_element_located((By.XPATH,next_button))
        
    )

    element.click()
except:
    driver.quit()

Selenium is unable to find the element and I've also tried using the find_element() function using various methods (by id etc) to no avail.

Answer 1

The locator //*[@id="ctl04_ctl06_ctl00_lnk2NextPg"] doesn't seem to be static.

Try this:

WebDriverWait(driver, 10).until(EC.element_to_be_clickable((By.XPATH, "//*[@aria-label='Next Page']"))).click()

If this doesn't work, then you can try this:

element = WebDriverWait(driver, 10).until(EC.element_to_be_clickable((By.XPATH, "//a[@aria-label='Next Page']")))
driver.execute_script("arguments[0].click();", element)

Alternate locator:

You can use //*[@title= 'Next Page'] instead of @aria-label locator Alternate locator:

Answer 2

You have to take care of a couple of things here:

• The initial part of the value of the id attribute is dynamic as in ctl04_ctl25_ctl00_lnk2NextPg and it would change everytime you access the page afresh. So you have to construct a dynamic locator strategy

• Moving ahead as you are invoking click(), instead of presence_of_element_located() you have to induce WebDriverWait for the element_to_be_clickable() and you can use either of the following locator strategies:

• Using CSS_SELECTOR:

  WebDriverWait(driver, 20).until(EC.element_to_be_clickable((By.CSS_SELECTOR, "a[id$='NextPg'][title='Next Page'][aria-label='Next Page']"))).click()
  

• Using XPATH:

  WebDriverWait(driver, 20).until(EC.element_to_be_clickable((By.XPATH, "//a[contains(@id, 'NextPg')][@title='Next Page' and @aria-label='Next Page']"))).click()
  

Answer 3

Just call the function directly:

driver.execute_script("Nav('-index=')")