How to force Selenium WebDriver to click on element which is not currently visible

Question

I am using Selenium 2 Java API with FirefoxDriver   When I fill a form  checkboxes are added to the page depending the forms inputs    I d like to simulate a click on those checkboxes using Selenium  The element are visible and usable in a regular browser but  selenium asserts that the elements are not visible    Element is not currently visible and so may not be interacted with    Can I force selenium to ignore the non-visible state of the elements  How can I force Selenium to interact with the non-visible element

User · Accepted Answer

Selenium determines an element is visible or not by the following criteria (use a DOM inspector to determine what css applies to your element, make sure you look at computed style):

visibility != hidden
display != none (is also checked against every parent element)
opacity != 0 (this is not checked for clicking an element)
height and width are both > 0
for an input, the attribute type != hidden

Your element is matching one of those criteria. If you do not have the ability to change the styling of the element, here is how you can forcefully do it with javascript (going to assume WebDriver since you said Selenium2 API):

((JavascriptExecutor)driver).executeScript("arguments[0].checked = true;", inputElement);

But that won't fire a javascript event, if you depend on the change event for that input you'll have to fire it too (many ways to do that, easiest to use whatever javascript library is loaded on that page).

The source for the visibility check -

https://github.com/SeleniumHQ/selenium/blob/master/javascript/atoms/dom.js#L577

The WebDriver spec that defines this -

https://dvcs.w3.org/hg/webdriver/raw-file/tip/webdriver-spec.html#widl-WebElement-isDisplayed-boolean

User · Answer

I just solve this error by waiting element display property  waitFor     element displayed

User · Answer

You can t force accessing changing element to which the user normally doesn t have access  as Selenium is designed to imitate user interaction   If this error happens  check if    element is visible in your viewport  try to maximize the current window that webdriver is using  e g  maximize   in node js  maximize window   in Python   your element is not appearing twice  under the same selector   and you re selecting the wrong one  if your element is hidden  then consider making it visible  if you d like to access change value of hidden element despite of the limitation  then use Javascript for that  e g  executeScript   in node js  execute script   in Python

User · Answer

I had a similar issue  but it was related to the element not being visible in the viewport  I took a screenshot and realized the browser window was too narrow and the element couldn t be seen  I did one of these and it worked   driver maximize window     See  WebDriver maximize window

User · Answer

I just solve this error while using capybara in ror project by adding   Capybara ignore elements   true   to features support env rb

User · Answer

There are many good answers on this page     I typically start with maximize window    actually I do this in the driver Factory or wherever you initialize your driver  This is something done by default - always  Its usually a wait for element because of some javascript delay     Both are discussed in various details above  The answer I didn t see was ScrollToElement  It sounds like you are processing a list of elements  while processing you are creating more elements  checkboxes  This can cause elements in your list to move off the visible page  Sometimes you can see the element with the naked eye but you just can t click on it  When processing lists you sometimes have to interject scrolling    Set a break point and check to see if the element you are using is at the window edge  top bottom right left  Sometimes when this is the case you can t get to it via selenium but you can manually click with your mouse    Because I run across this I created a PageScroll java and put my scrolling scripts there  Here are a few of the methods from this class   public static void scrollToTop WebDriver driver            JavascriptExecutor  driver           executeScript  window scrollTo 0 0                public static void scrollToBottom WebDriver driver            JavascriptExecutor  driver           executeScript  window scrollTo 0  document body scrollHeight                public static void scrollToElementTop WebDriver driver  WebElement element            JavascriptExecutor  driver  executeScript           arguments 0  scrollIntoView true     element              public static void scrollToElementBottom WebDriver driver  WebElement element            JavascriptExecutor  driver  executeScript           arguments 0  scrollIntoView false     element           see Scroll Element into View with Selenium  for more examples

User · Answer

Sometimes this means there are multiple elements on a page that have the same property you re trying to search by and you re  talking to the wrong one    If your element can t be uniquely identified by  id or  name  or  class   it could be tricky   Sometimes searching for the element by the  xpath will help and in some cases even that is not practical   In those cases  you may have to get all the elements that match your criteria and reference the right one by the index  It s dirty  but it works   I m using Selenium   Watir from Ruby on Rails app  so in my case the example would be   browser   Watir  Browser new  firefox   profile   gt   default          browser goto  http   www google com analytics     login browser divs  text     New Property   last click   Hope this helps

User · Answer

The invisibility can also be due to timing when the element is supposed to slowly appear  Forcing the browser to wait a bit might help in that case   See  e g    the question on letting WebDriver wait until an element is present

User · Answer

I get into ElementNotVisibleException exception using selenium for functional tests on a django site with bootstrap glyphicons as links in templates as    lt a href     url  item-add      gt  lt span class  glyphicon glyphicon-plus text-danger  gt  lt  span gt  lt  a gt    During my functional tests  the bootstrap style is not loaded  then trying to click on such links will raise ElementNotVisibleException  I manage to make them clickable just adding a space in the tag  like that    lt a href     url  item-add      gt  lt span class  glyphicon glyphicon-plus text-danger  gt  amp nbsp  lt  span gt  lt  a gt

User · Answer

Or you may use Selenium Action Class to simulate user interaction -- For example      WebDriver   new FirefoxDriver         WebElement menu   driver findElement By xpath          the triger event element      Actions build   new Actions driver      heare you state ActionBuider     build moveToElement menu  build   perform       Here you perform hover mouse over the needed elemnt to triger the visibility of the hidden     WebElement m2m  driver findElement By xpath        the previous non visible element     m2m click

User · Answer

To add my grain of sand here  if an element resides behind a fixed div it will be considered as not visible and you won t be able to click it  this happened to me recently and i solved it executing a script as recommended above  which does   document evaluate   lt xpath locator for element to be clicked gt    document  null  XPathResult ANY TYPE  null  iterateNext   click     locator

User · Answer

There is also another case when visible element will be recognized as not visible    When the Element is CSS transformed When Parent Element of the Element is CSS transformed   In order to check if element you wan t to interact with is CSS transformed  on CHROME do this    open inspector Find interesting element  or more likely its parent element  supposedly div element  Select  Computed  tab if there is a parameter   webkit-transform  matrix        it means that the element is CSS transformed  and may not be recognized by selenium 2 as a visible element

User · Answer

I had the same problem with selenium 2 in internet explorer 9  but my fix is really strange  I was not able to click into inputs inside my form -  selenium repeats  their are not visible    It occured when my form had curved shadows -  http   www paulund co uk creating-different-css3-box-shadows-effects  in the concrete  Effect no  2   I have no idea  why amp how this pseudo element solution s stopped selenium tests  but it works for me

User · Answer

The accepted answer worked for me  Below is some code to find the parent element that s making Selenium think it s not visible    x000D   x000D  function getStyles element   x000D    x000D   computedStyle   window getComputedStyle element   x000D   x000D   if computedStyle opacity     0 x000D      computedStyle display      none  x000D      computedStyle visibility      hidden  x000D       computedStyle height  lt  0  amp  amp  computedStyle height  lt  0  x000D      element type      hidden     x000D    console log  Found an element that Selenium will consider to not be visible   x000D    console log element   x000D    console log  opacity      computedStyle opacity   x000D    console log  display      computedStyle display   x000D    console log  visibility      computedStyle visibility   x000D    console log  height      computedStyle height   x000D    console log  width      computedStyle width   x000D     x000D   x000D   if element parentElement   x000D    getStyles element parentElement   x000D     x000D    x000D   x000D  getStyles document getElementById  REPLACE WITH THE ID OF THE ELEMENT YOU THINK IS VISIBLE BUT SELENIUM CAN NOT FIND     x000D   x000D   x000D

[java] How to force Selenium WebDriver to click on element which is not currently visible?

Examples related to java

Examples related to selenium-webdriver