How to Hover over and click on an invisible element using selenium webdriver?

Question

There is an invisible element on my HTML page which becomes visible when a mouse hover is done on the element. What I Have to do is

1. Hover over the element
2. Click on the element (it will display 4 options)
3. Click on one of the options

I am using Java API for selenium web driver and following is what I have been trying

Actions builder = new Actions(driver);
builder.moveToElement(MainMenuBTN).click().build().perform();

subMenuBTN.click();

1. MainMenuBTN = element that becomes visible when you hover the mouse over it
2. subMenuBTN = element that is being chosen out of the menu options that are displayed

What is happening is, the click() on MainMenuBTN is generating ElementNotVisible exception. I tried following to avoid this, but did not work.

Actions builder = new Actions(driver);
builder.moveToElement(mainMenuBTN).build().perform();
builder.click();

subMenuBTN.click();

A Note : mainMenuBTN and subMenuBTN are WebElements generated by

driver.findElement(By.xpath("xpath_string"))

Am I missing anything? Help appreciated !

Answer 1

Well, after going through your questions numerous times and changing my answers many times I will go with -

Issue - what I got from the original code -

You need to move the cursor to the mainMenuBTN (which is visible not the element that becomes visible when you hover the mouse over it ) and subMenuBTN is then displayed which you need to click.

The only edit to your original code as per me will be adding a statement to move the cursor to your subMenuBTN before you click it. This way works fine for me when I need to click sub menu item.

Actions builder = new Actions(driver);
builder.moveToElement(mainMenuBTN).build().perform();
builder.moveToElement(subMenuBTN).build().perform();
subMenuBTN.click();

Please let me know if this is the case.

Answer 2

using javascript executor like

((JavascriptExecutor) webdriver).executeScript("document.getElementById('btn').click();");