Modal dialog present Exception

Question

I try to click on a element, by this way:

WebElement title = driver.findElement(By.xpath("//a[text()=\"Delete this document library\"]"));
title.click();

When I click on it manually, its opens a window:

The page at http://.. says
Are you sure you want to delete the selected items?

with OK and Cancel buttons

But when I run it with WebDriver (in Firefox 20.0), I get the next error:

[Exception]: Modal dialog present

and I don't see even the window.

What can be the reason?

Answer 1

You don't see the Alert when you run the test is because the default behavior of the WebDriver is that it accepts alert when the Modal dialog present exception is thrown. It happens so fast that you can't see the alert.

  WebElement title = driver.findElement(By.xpath("//a[text()=\"Delete this document library\"]"));
title.click();

//Now the alert appears. 
Alert alert = driver.switchTo().alert();
alert.accept();