Alternative way for click()

Question

I have been using click() all the time through phantomJS engine on page.evaluate() and it works just fine. but sometimes it just doesn't work I don't know why.

for example I am trying to click the button verify here

I tried this :

page.evaluate(function() {
  document.getElementById('recaptcha-verify-button').click();
});

and this :

rect = page.evaluate(function() {
  return document.getElementById('recaptcha-verify-button').getBoundingClientRect();
});

console.log(rect.left + " " + rect.right);
page.sendEvent('mousemove', rect.left + rect.width / 2, rect.top + rect.height / 2);
page.sendEvent('mousedown', rect.left + rect.width / 2, rect.top + rect.height / 2);
page.sendEvent('mouseup', rect.left + rect.width / 2, rect.top + rect.height / 2)

Both did not work, There was no output after the click() , I tried the same on chrome though and it was the same. any ideas or suggestions are appreciated.

Answer 1

You can use any previously known way to click. You have two problems unrelated to the clicking itself:

• Elements can only be accessed in their respective Document. ReCAPTCHA is always loaded in an iframe, which is a different Document that you have to switch to. For example: page.switchToFrame(0);

• Google delivers different pages depending on the capabilities of the user agent (PhantomJS in this case). It detects that PhantomJS doesn't have JavaScript enables (for some reason) and delivers a different form which doesn't have a #recaptcha-verify-button element. Instead it has:

  <div class="fbc-button-verify">
      <input type="submit" value="Verify">
  </div>
  

Full script:

var page = require('webpage').create();

page.open('https://www.google.com/recaptcha/api2/demo', function() {
    page.render('1.png');
    page.switchToFrame(0);
    page.evaluate(function(){
        document.querySelector('.fbc-button-verify > input').click();
    });
    setTimeout(function(){
        page.render('2.png');
        phantom.exit();
    }, 3000);
});

Tested it with: PhantomJS 1.9.8 and 2.1.1