how to scroll a web page using watir

Question

I am trying to scroll a web page to find and click on a content that is lazily loaded when the page is scrolled. I am using following command

require 'watir-webdriver'

@browser = Watir::new :firefox
@browser.send_keys :space

I am using web-driver with firefox and I am on ubuntu but it is not working. In the following ruby code I am trying to scroll the page down until I don't find the element with :id. The element is loading lazily. I am getting timeout after few seconds, any idea what is wrong with the following code.

When /^deal (\d+) is loaded$/ do |id|
  (0..5).each do |click|    
    @browser.send_keys :space
  end
end

What is the best way to scroll a page using watir-driver ?

Answer 1

If you have JavaScript enabled, you can access the underlying driver and execute some JavaScript to scroll on the page.

@browser.driver.executeScript("window.scrollBy(0,200)")

will scroll down the page 200 pixels along the y axix.

See here for documentation of the method:

http://www.w3schools.com/jsref/met_win_scrollby.asp

Answer 2

I use a gem called "watir-scroll" to assist me with this. Though it usually needs places to scroll to, it also will scroll to coordinates.

https://github.com/p0deje/watir-scroll Since Watir v6.16 watir-scroll gem merged into watir

You can either scroll to a specific element

button1 = @browser.input(:class => "mileage_rate")
@browser.scroll.to button1

Or just scroll to the top middle or center

@browser.scroll.to :top
@browser.scroll.to :center
@browser.scroll.to :bottom

Or scroll to a coordinate

browser.scroll.to [0, 200]