How to open a link embeded in a webelement with in the main tab, in a new tab of the same window using Control + Click of Selenium Webdriver

Question

There is a link embedded in a web element in the Main Tab, I want to open that link in a new tab in the same window using Selenium Webdriver and python. Perform some tasks in the new tab and then close that tab and return back to the main tab. Manually we will do this by right-clicking on the link and then select "open in new tab" to open that link in new tab.

I am new to Selenium. I am using Selenium and BeautifulSoup to web scrape. I only know how to click on a link. I have read through many posts but couldn't find a proper answer

url = "https://www.website.com"
path = r'path_to_chrome_driver'
drive = webdriver.Chrome(path)
drive.implicitly_wait(30)
drive.get(url)
source = drie.page_source

py_button = driver.find_element_by_css_selector("div[data-res-position = '1']")
py_button.click()

I expect the link in div[data-res-position = '1'] to open in a new tab

Answer 1

As there is a link embedded within in the webelement in the Parent Tab, to open the link in a New Tab in the same window using Selenium and Python you can use the following solution:

To demonstrate the workflow the url https://www.google.com/ was opened in the Parent Tab and then open in new tab functionalty is implemented through ActionChains methods key_down(), click() and key_up() methods.

• Code Block:

  from selenium import webdriver
  from selenium.webdriver.support.ui import WebDriverWait
  from selenium.webdriver.common.by import By
  from selenium.webdriver.support import expected_conditions as EC
  from selenium.webdriver.common.action_chains import ActionChains
  from selenium.webdriver.common.keys import Keys
  import time
  
  options = webdriver.ChromeOptions() 
  options.add_argument("start-maximized")
  driver = webdriver.Chrome(options=options, executable_path=r'C:\WebDrivers\chromedriver.exe')
  driver.get("https://www.google.com/")
  link = WebDriverWait(driver, 20).until(EC.element_to_be_clickable((By.LINK_TEXT, "Gmail")))
  ActionChains(driver).key_down(Keys.CONTROL).click(link).key_up(Keys.CONTROL).perform()
  

• Note: You need to replace (By.LINK_TEXT, "Gmail") with your desired locator e.g. ("div[data-res-position = '1']")

• Browser Snapshot:

You can find a relevant Java based solution in Opening a new tab using Ctrl + click combination in Selenium Webdriver

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Update

To shift Selenium's focus to the newly opened tab you can find a detailed discussion in Open web in new tab Selenium + Python