Selenium : Call javascript function on page

Question

I'm trying to call an existing javascript function on the page but I'm not getting it.

This is the element I have:

<area shape="rect" coords="513,0,580,66" href="#" onclick="document.f2.submit();">

This is the call:

IJavaScriptExecutor js = driver as IJavaScriptExecutor;
js.ExecuteScript("document.f2.submit()");

Exception:

unknown error: Cannot read property 'submit' of undefined
(Session info: chrome=55.0.2883.87)
(Driver info: chromedriver=2.27.440174 (e97a722caafc2d3a8b807ee115bfb307f7d2cfd9),platform=Windows NT 6.1.7601 SP1 x86_64)

How can I perform this operation normally?

Answer 1

It sometimes happens that the script executes too early and some elements in the page are not in place yet (thus giving errors).

The best thing to do in these cases is to execute the script after some time has passed in order to determine that that is really the problem.

js.ExecuteScript("setTimeout(function() { document.f2.submit(); }, 1000);");

After confirming that the problem really is timing, the next thing to do is figure out when to perform the script injection so that the element is in the page and there's no problem (and thus you can remove the setTimeout from the script injection and leave only the operation you wanted to perform initially).