selenium webdriver: org.openqa.selenium.ElementNotVisibleException: Element is not currently visible and so may not be interacted with

Question

I am trying to click on the span with the text- clone concept. Following is the html

<ul class="context-menu-list context-menu-root" style="width: 210px; top: 500px; left: 231px; z-index: 2;">
    <li class="context-menu-item">
    <li class="context-menu-item">
    <li class="context-menu-item disabled">
    <li class="context-menu-item">
    <li class="context-menu-item icon icon-evn-icon-clone-concept">
        <span>Clone concept</span>
    </li>
    <li class="context-menu-item">
    <li class="context-menu-item icon icon-delete disabled">
</ul>

the javascript code i use is:

driver.findElement(By.xpath("//span[text()='Clone concept']")).click();

I verified that this is the right for the element through firepath.

I also made sure that element is visible as per the link How to force Selenium WebDriver to click on element which is not currently visible?

Here is the computed css

font-family Verdana,?Arial,?Helvetica,?sans-serif
    .context-menu-list  Verdana,?Arial,?Helvetica,?sans-serif   
    jquery...enu.css (line 15)
    body    Arial,?Helvetica,?sans-serif    
    swa.css (line 3)
    font-size   11px
    .context-menu-list  11px    
    jquery...enu.css (line 15)
    list-style-type none
    .context-menu-list  none    
    jquery...enu.css (line 15)

Also tried the following code:

WebElement foo = driver.findElement(By.xpath("//span[text()='Clone concept']"));
Actions bar = new Actions(driver);
bar.click(foo).perform(); 

Exception: org.openqa.selenium.ElementNotVisibleException: Element is not currently visible and so may not be interacted with Command duration or timeout: 30.04 seconds Build info: version: '2.24.1', revision: '17205', time: '2012-06-19 16:53:24' System info: os.name: 'Windows 7', os.arch: 'amd64', os.version: '6.1', java.version: '1.7.0' Driver info: driver.version: RemoteWebDriver

Any help will be appreciated.

Another hack for those who get stuck here:
For the time being I have been able to move forward by splitting this huge test case into simpler test cases.

Answer 1

Unfortunately Webdriver doesn't seem to be great at handling situations like that described in your questions. You have a couple of options though. Mock a click using Javascript:

JavascriptLibrary jsLib = new JavascriptLibrary(); 
jsLib.callEmbeddedSelenium(selenium,"triggerMouseEventAt", elementToClick,"click", "0,0");

or

((JavascriptExecutor) driver).executeScript("arguments[0].click();", elementToClick);

Or you can play around with using actions to click all of the elements in the menu chain. Unfortunately I have found this to be unreliable.

I have a script which detects whether an element is in a menu chain and if it is clicks on them in the required order to finally click on the one the user wanted if you want it I can post it somewhere but it isn't pretty or short.

Answer 2

For the above query, here is the xpath:

//ui[@class='context-menu-list context-menu-root']/span[contains(text(),'Clone concept')]