click command in selenium webdriver does not work

Question

I have just recently done an export of my selenium IDE code to selenium web driver. I have found that a lot of the commands that worked in IDE either fail to work or selenium web driver claims to not support at all. So far I've been tackling these issues one at a time which is less than ideal...

Currently I'm working on finding out why clicking on a button does not work with web driver while it had previously worked in selenium IDE. My browser is FF 13 and my OS is Ubuntu.

Code Snippet

WebElement loginButton = driver.findElement(By.name("submit")); loginButton.click(); 

I had previously tried

driver.findElement(By.name("submit")).click(); 

however the above line failed as well. The element is getting selected, however it does not log us in as I would like. I found other pages with similar problems, but their problem seemed to be with Internet Explorer not Firefox. I don't even want to think about the problems IE will give me down the road.

thanks,

P.S. A tip on a better way to migrate from selenium IDE to Selenium Webdriver without losing all the tests I've written could solve this issue as well.

Answer 1

If you know for sure that the element is present, you could try this to simulate the click - if .Click() isn't working

driver.findElement(By.name("submit")).sendKeys(Keys.RETURN); 

or

driver.findElement(By.name("submit")).sendKeys(Keys.ENTER); 

Answer 2

A major thing to watch out for is whether a button is Enabled or not. You can still click them and nothing will fall over and the element is there but it is not ready to be clicked on so just doesnt do anything.

I've been using webdriver and its taken me most of the day to figure this out!

The following method seems to work reliably (in my environment for one button!)

    private void TryClick(By selector)     {         var wait = WaitUpTo(TimeSpan.FromSeconds(10));         var element = wait.Until(ExpectedConditions.ElementIsVisible((selector)));          //really important bit!         WaitUpTo(TimeSpan.FromSeconds(5))             .Until(d => element.Enabled);          element.Click();     } 

you use it something like

TryClick(By.XPath("//button[contains(.//*,'Some Text')]"));