Clicking at coordinates without identifying element

Question

As part of my Selenium test for a login function, I would like to click a button by identifying its coordinates and instructing Selenium to click at those coordinates. This would be done without identifying the element itself (via id, xpath, etc).

I understand there are other more efficient ways to run a click command, but I'm looking to specifically use this approach to best match the user experience. Thanks.

Answer 1

There is a way to do this. Using the ActionChains API you can move the mouse over a containing element, adjust by some offset (relative to the middle of that element) to put the "cursor" over the desired button (or other element), and then click at that location. Here's how to do it using webdriver in Python:

from selenium import webdriver
from selenium.webdriver.common.action_chains import ActionChains
browser = webdriver.Chrome()
elem = browser.find_element_by_selector(".some > selector")
ac = ActionChains(browser)
ac.move_to_element(elem).move_by_offset(x_offset, y_offset).click().perform()

Y'all are much to quick to dismiss the question. There are a number of reasons one might to need to click at a specific location, rather than on an element. In my case I have an SVG bar chart with an overlay element that catches all the clicks. I want to simulate a click over one of the bars, but since the overlay is there Selenium can't click on the element itself. This technique would also be valuable for imagemaps.

Answer 2

In C# API you use actions

var element = driver.FindElement(By...);
new Actions(driver).moveToElement(element).moveByOffset(dx, dy).click().perform();

Although it is best to just use simple Id, CSS, Xpath selectors when possible. But the functionality is there when needed (i.e. clicking elements in certain geographic places for functionality).