Execute jQuery function using RSelenium package

Question

I'm trying to automate a process of logging on to a website and performing some process on it, using the RSelenium package. I have been able to login, click on buttons here and there, but I am stuck at executing a jQuery function on the page. There's a dropdown box which populates data in it using a jQuery function. I'm not sure how to execute this function. The page source (including the jQuery function) is as follows:

 <input disabled="disabled" id="stuff" name="stuff" style="width:100%" type="text" /><script>
    jQuery(function(){jQuery("#stuff").kendoDropDownList({"change":disableNext,"dataSource":{"transport":{"read":{"url":"/StuffInfo/GetStuff","data":filterStuff},"prefix":""},"serverFiltering":true,"filter":[],"schema":{"errors":"Errors"}},"autoBind":false,"optionLabel":"Select court...","cascadeFrom":"state"});});
</script>
            <script>

The name of the dropdown is stuff and I'm using the following code to access it:

library("RSelenium")

startServer()
mybrowser <- remoteDriver()
mybrowser$open()
mybrowser$navigate("<URL>")
wxChooseStuff <- mybrowser$findElement(using='id',"stuff")

when I try to execute the following command:

wxChooseStuff$clickElement()

I get the following error:

Error:   Summary: ElementNotVisible
     Detail: An element command could not be completed because the element is not visible on the page.
     class: org.openqa.selenium.ElementNotVisibleException

I was hoping that the click would auto-populate data in the dropdown.

Any pointers on how to execute the jQuery function using RSelenium would be much appreciated.

Even if I can execute the jQuery function using another package, that will be fine. I would like to just execute this function and click on the element.

PS - I'm not a web developer, so pardon me if I'm asking a stupid question.

EDIT:

I tried the following code as per suggestion:

In this command, I just include the complete text enclosed in the script tag, replacing all the double quotes (") with single quotes (')

 mybrowser$executeScript(script = "jQuery(function(){jQuery('#stuff').kendoDropDownList({'change':disableNext,'dataSource':{'transport':{'read':{'url':'/StuffInfo/GetStuff','data':filterStuff},'prefix':''},'serverFiltering':true,'filter':[],'schema':{'errors':'Errors'}},'autoBind':false,'optionLabel':'Select court...','cascadeFrom':'state'});});")

wxChooseStuff <- mybrowser$findElement(using='id',"stuff")
mybrowser$executeScript(script = "arguments[0].hidden = false;", 
                        args = list(wxChooseStuff))
wxChooseStuff$clickElement()

but I received the following error:

Error:   Summary: ElementNotVisible
     Detail: An element command could not be completed because the element is not visible on the page.
     class: org.openqa.selenium.ElementNotVisibleException

Looks like the element is still not to be found.

Answer 1

If you're using Chrome browser, right-click on the element you want to "click" in RSelenium, and choose Inspect. Once in the developer console, right-click again on the highlighted element and choose Copy/Copy Xpath. Finally, in your R code use findElement(using="xpath", "xpath string you've copied"). In my experience RSelenium has notoriously issues with finding things on the page using ID, whereas XPath is (again, for me) way more robust.