[selenium] Scroll Element into View with Selenium

Is there any way in either Selenium 1.x or 2.x to scroll the browser window so that a particular element identified by an XPath is in view of the browser? There is a focus method in Selenium, but it does not seem to physically scroll the view in FireFox. Does anyone have any suggestions on how to do this?

The reason I need this is I'm testing the click of an element on the page. Unfortunately the event doesn't seem to work unless the element is visible. I don't have control of the code that fires when the element is clicked, so I can't debug or make modifications to it, so, easiest solution is to scroll the item into view.

I have used this way for scrolling the element and click:

List<WebElement> image = state.getDriver().findElements(By.xpath("//*[contains(@src,'image/plus_btn.jpg')]"));

for (WebElement clickimg : image)
{
  ((JavascriptExecutor) state.getDriver()).executeScript("arguments[0].scrollIntoView(false);", clickimg);
  clickimg.click();
}

You may want to visit page Scroll Web elements and Web page- Selenium WebDriver using Javascript:

public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {

    // TODO Auto-generated method stub
    FirefoxDriver ff = new FirefoxDriver();
    ff.get("http://toolsqa.com");
    Thread.sleep(5000);
    ff.executeScript("document.getElementById('text-8').scrollIntoView(true);");
}

Use the driver to send keys like the pagedown or downarrow key to bring the element into view. I know it's too simple a solution and might not be applicable in all cases.

Something that worked for me was to use the Browser.MoveMouseToElement method on an element at the bottom of the browser window. Miraculously it worked in Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Chrome.

I chose this over the JavaScript injection technique just because it felt less hacky.

Selenium can scroll to some element in the scrollbar automatically for some simple UI, but for lazy-load UI, scrollToElement is still needed.

This is my implementation in Java with JavascriptExecutor. You can find more details in Satix source code: http://www.binpress.com/app/satix-seleniumbased-automation-testing-in-xml/1958

public static void perform(WebDriver driver, String Element, String ElementBy, By by) throws Exception {
 try {
  //long start_time = System.currentTimeMillis();           
  StringBuilder js = new StringBuilder();
  String browser = "firefox";

  if (ElementBy.equals("id")) {
   js.append("var b = document.getElementById(\"" +
    Element + "\");");
  } else if (ElementBy.equals("xpath")) {
   if (!"IE".equals(browser)) {
    js.append("var b = document.evaluate(\"" +
     Element +
     "\", document, null, XPathResult.ANY_TYPE, null).iterateNext();");
   } else {
    throw new Exception("Action error: xpath is not supported in scrollToElement Action in IE");
   }
  } else if (ElementBy.equals("cssSelector")) {
   js.append("var b = document.querySelector(\"" +
    Element + "\");");
  } else {
   throw new Exception("Scroll Action error");
  }

  String getScrollHeightScript = js.toString() + "var o = new Array(); o.push(b.scrollHeight); return o;";

  js.append("b.scrollTop = b.scrollTop + b.clientHeight;");
  js.append("var tmp = b.scrollTop + b.clientHeight;");
  js.append("var o = new Array(); o.push(tmp); return o;");

  int tries = 1;
  String scrollTop = "0";
  while (tries > 0) {
   try {
    String scrollHeight = ((JavascriptExecutor) driver).executeScript(getScrollHeightScript).toString();
    if (scrollTop.equals(scrollHeight)) {
     break;
    } else if (driver.findElement(by).isDisplayed()) {
     break;
    }
    Object o = ((JavascriptExecutor) driver).executeScript(js.toString());
    scrollTop = o.toString();
    Thread.sleep(interval);
    tries++;
   } catch (Exception e) {
    throw new Exception("Action error:" +
     " javascript execute error : " + e.getMessage() + ", javascript : " + js.toString());
   }
  }

 } catch (Exception e) {
  try {
   ScreenshotCapturerUtil.saveScreenShot(driver, CLASSNAME);
  } catch (IOException e1) {
   throw new Exception("Save screenshot error!", e1);
  }
  throw e;
 }
}

From my experience, Selenium Webdriver doesn't auto scroll to an element on click when there are more than one scrollable section on the page (which is quite common).

I am using Ruby, and for my AUT, I had to monkey patch the click method as follows;

class Element

      #
      # Alias the original click method to use later on
      #
      alias_method :base_click, :click

      # Override the base click method to scroll into view if the element is not visible
      # and then retry click
      #
      def click
        begin
          base_click
        rescue Selenium::WebDriver::Error::ElementNotVisibleError
          location_once_scrolled_into_view
          base_click
        end
      end

The 'location_once_scrolled_into_view' method is an existing method on WebElement class.

I apreciate you may not be using Ruby but it should give you some ideas.

This worked for me:

IWebElement element = driver.FindElements(getApplicationObject(currentObjectName, currentObjectType, currentObjectUniqueId))[0];
 ((IJavaScriptExecutor)driver).ExecuteScript("arguments[0].scrollIntoView(true);", element);

I am not sure if the question is still relevant but after referring to scrollIntoView documentation from https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Element/scrollIntoView.

The easiest solution would be

executor.executeScript("arguments[0].scrollIntoView({block: \"center\",inline: \"center\",behavior: \"smooth\"});",element);

This scrolls the element into center of the page.

Selenium 2 tries to scroll to the element and then click on it. This is because Selenium 2 will not interact with an element unless it thinks that it is visible.

Scrolling to the element happens implicitly so you just need to find the item and then work with it.

If nothing works, try this before clicking:

public void mouseHoverJScript(WebElement HoverElement) {

    String mouseOverScript = "if(document.createEvent){var evObj = document.createEvent('MouseEvents');evObj.initEvent('mouseover', true, false); arguments[0].dispatchEvent(evObj);} else if(document.createEventObject) { arguments[0].fireEvent('onmouseover');}";
    ((JavascriptExecutor) driver).executeScript(mouseOverScript, HoverElement);
}

In Selenium we need to take the help of a JavaScript executor to scroll to an element or scroll the page:

je.executeScript("arguments[0].scrollIntoView(true);", element);

In the above statement element is the exact element where we need to scroll. I tried the above code, and it worked for me.

I have a complete post and video on this:

http://learn-automation.com/how-to-scroll-into-view-in-selenium-webdriver/

This is a repeated solution with JavaScript, but with an added waiting for element.

Otherwise ElementNotVisibleException may appear if some action on the element is being done.

this.executeJavaScriptFunction("arguments[0].scrollIntoView(true);", elementToBeViewable);
WebDriverWait wait = new WebDriverWait(getDriver(), 5);
wait.until(ExpectedConditions.visibilityOf(elementToBeViewable));

JavascriptExecutor js = (JavascriptExecutor) driver;
        js.executeScript("javascript:window.scrollBy(250,350)");

You may want to try this.

I've been doing testing with ADF components and you have to have a separate command for scrolling if lazy loading is used. If the object is not loaded and you attempt to find it using Selenium, Selenium will throw an element-not-found exception.

In Java we can scroll by using JavaScript, like in the following code:

driver.getEval("var elm = window.document.getElementById('scrollDiv'); if (elm.scrollHeight > elm.clientHeight){elm.scrollTop = elm.scrollHeight;}");

You can assign a desired value to the "elm.scrollTop" variable.

I agree with everyone here, who say "Selenium has an implicit scroll option". Also if you were in Selenium 1 and now you have upgraded yourself to Selenium 2 and look for previous version's commands, you can use the command known as:

Seleniumbackeddriver.

WebDriver driver = new FirefoxDriver();
public void setUp() throws Exception {

    String baseUrl = "http://www.google.co.in/";
    selenium = new WebDriverBackedSelenium(driver, baseUrl);
}

You could make use of these and use commands of both versions.

In most of the situation for scrolling this code will work.

WebElement element = driver.findElement(By.xpath("xpath_Of_Element"));                 
js.executeScript("arguments[0].click();",element);

For OpenQA.Selenium in C#:

WebDriver.ExecuteJavaScript("arguments[0].scrollIntoView({block: \"center\", inline: \"center\"});", Element);

Where WebDriver is new ChromeDriver(options) or similar.

You can use this code snippet to scroll:

C#

var element = Driver.FindElement(By.Id("element-id"));
Actions actions = new Actions(Driver);
actions.MoveToElement(element).Perform();

There you have it

The Ruby script for scrolling an element into view is as below.

$driver.execute_script("arguments[0].scrollIntoView(true);", element)
sleep(3)
element.click

A solution is:

public void javascriptclick(String element)
{
    WebElement webElement = driver.findElement(By.xpath(element));
    JavascriptExecutor js = (JavascriptExecutor) driver;

    js.executeScript("arguments[0].click();", webElement);
    System.out.println("javascriptclick" + " " + element);
}

def scrollToElement(element: WebElement) = {
  val location = element.getLocation
  driver.asInstanceOf[JavascriptExecutor].executeScript(s"window.scrollTo(${location.getX},${location.getY});")
}

Do a random click down the page:

driver.findElement(By.id("ID of a web element present below")).click

Then perform what you want to do.

JAVA

Try scroll to element utilize x y position, and use JavascriptExecutor with this is argument: "window.scrollBy(x, y)".

Following import:

import org.openqa.selenium.WebElement;
import org.openqa.selenium.JavascriptExecutor;

First you need get x y location the element.

//initialize element
WebElement element = driver.findElement(By.id("..."));

//get position
int x = element.getLocation().getX();
int y = element.getLocation().getY();

//scroll to x y 
JavascriptExecutor js = (JavascriptExecutor) driver;
js.executeScript("window.scrollBy(" +x +", " +y +")");

You can use the org.openqa.selenium.interactions.Actions class to move to an element.

Java:

WebElement element = driver.findElement(By.id("my-id"));
Actions actions = new Actions(driver);
actions.moveToElement(element);
actions.perform();

Python:

from selenium.webdriver.common.action_chains import ActionChains
ActionChains(driver).move_to_element(driver.sl.find_element_by_id('my-id')).perform()

webElement = driver.findElement(By.xpath("bla-bla-bla"));
((JavascriptExecutor)driver).executeScript("arguments[0].scrollIntoView();", webElement);

For more examples, go here. All in Russian, but Java code is cross-cultural :)

The default behavior of Selenium us to scroll so the element is barely in view at the top of the viewport. Also, not all browsers have the exact same behavior. This is very dis-satisfying. If you record videos of your browser tests, like I do, what you want is for the element to scroll into view and be vertically centered.

Here is my solution for Java:

public List<String> getBoundedRectangleOfElement(WebElement we)
{
    JavascriptExecutor je = (JavascriptExecutor) driver;
    List<String> bounds = (ArrayList<String>) je.executeScript(
            "var rect = arguments[0].getBoundingClientRect();" +
                    "return [ '' + parseInt(rect.left), '' + parseInt(rect.top), '' + parseInt(rect.width), '' + parseInt(rect.height) ]", we);
    System.out.println("top: " + bounds.get(1));
    return bounds;
}

And then, to scroll, you call it like this:

public void scrollToElementAndCenterVertically(WebElement we)
{
    List<String> bounds = getBoundedRectangleOfElement(we);
    Long totalInnerPageHeight = getViewPortHeight(driver);
    JavascriptExecutor je = (JavascriptExecutor) driver;
    je.executeScript("window.scrollTo(0, " + (Integer.parseInt(bounds.get(1)) - (totalInnerPageHeight/2)) + ");");
    je.executeScript("arguments[0].style.outline = \"thick solid #0000FF\";", we);
}

If you want to scroll on the Firefox window using the Selenium webdriver, one of the ways is to use JavaScript in the Java code. The JavaScript code to scroll down (to bottom of the web page) is as follows:

JavascriptExecutor js = (JavascriptExecutor) driver;
js.executeScript("window.scrollTo(0, Math.max(document.documentElement.scrollHeight, document.body.scrollHeight, document.documentElement.clientHeight));");

If this object passing does not works:

await browser.executeScript( "arguments[0].scrollIntoView()", await browser.wait( until.elementLocated( By.xpath( "//div[@jscontroller='MC8mtf']" ) ), 1000 ) );

There is a demonstration for scroll to microphone button, on google page. Found it by javascript xpath, using chromedriver and selenium-webdriver.

start1() start a browser in narrow window, the microphone button does not shows.

start2() start a browser in narrow window, then scroll to microphone button.

require('chromedriver');
const { Builder, 
        By, 
        Key, 
        until
      }                = require('selenium-webdriver');

async function start1()  {

  var browser = new Builder()
                    .forBrowser( 'chrome' )
                    .build();
  await browser
        .manage()
        .window()
        .setRect( { width: 80, 
                    height: 1040, 
                    x:-10, 
                    y:0} 
                );
  await browser.navigate().to( "https://www.google.com/" );
}

async function start2()  {

  var browser = new Builder()
                    .forBrowser( 'chrome' )
                    .build();
  await browser
        .manage()
        .window()
        .setRect( { width: 80, 
                    height: 1040, 
                    x:-10, 
                    y:0} 
                );
  await browser.navigate().to( "https://www.google.com/" );
  await browser.executeScript( "document.evaluate(\"//div[@jscontroller='MC8mtf']\", document, null, XPathResult.FIRST_ORDERED_NODE_TYPE, null).singleNodeValue.scrollIntoView(true);");
}

start1();
start2();

This code is working for me:

JavascriptExecutor js = (JavascriptExecutor) driver;
js.executeScript("javascript:window.scrollBy(250, 350)");

Sometimes I also faced the problem of scrolling with Selenium. So I used javaScriptExecuter to achieve this.

For scrolling down:

WebDriver driver = new ChromeDriver();
JavascriptExecutor js = (JavascriptExecutor)driver;
js.executeScript("window.scrollBy(0, 250)", "");

Or, also

js.executeScript("scroll(0, 250);");

For scrolling up:

js.executeScript("window.scrollBy(0,-250)", "");

Or,

js.executeScript("scroll(0, -250);");

Have tried many things with respect to scroll, but the below code has provided better results.

This will scroll until the element is in view:

WebElement element = driver.findElement(By.id("id_of_element"));
((JavascriptExecutor) driver).executeScript("arguments[0].scrollIntoView(true);", element);
Thread.sleep(500); 

//do anything you want with the element

Targeting any element and sending down keys (or up/left/right) seems to work also. I know this is a bit of a hack, but I'm not really into the idea of using JavaScript to solve the scrolling problem either.

For example:

WebElement.sendKeys(Keys.DOWN);

If you think other answers were too hacky, this one is too, but there is no JavaScript injection involved.

When the button is off the screen, it breaks and scrolls to it, so retry it... ¯\_(?)_/¯

try
{
    element.Click();
}
catch {
    element.Click();
}

Here is how I do it with PHP webDriver for Selenium. It Works for Selenium stand-alone server 2.39.0 + https://github.com/Element-34/php-webdriver + Firefox 25.0

$element=$session->welement("xpath", "//input[@value='my val']");
$element->click();
$element=$session->welement("xpath", "//input[@value='ma val2']");
$element->location_in_view(); // < -- this is the candy
$element->click();

Note: I use a customized version of the Element34 PHP-webdriver. But there is not any change in the core. I just use my "welement" instead of "element". But it makes no influence on the case in question. The driver author says "to allow almost all API calls to be a direct transformation of what is defined in the WebDriver protocol itself." So you should have no problem with other programming languages.

Just clicking will not work in my setup. It will do a scroll instead of click, so I had to click twice without calling "location_in_view()".

Note: This method works for elements that can be viewed, like an input of type button.

Take a look at: http://code.google.com/p/selenium/wiki/JsonWireProtocol#/session/:sessionId/element/:id/location

The description for JsonWireProtocol# suggest usage of location + moveto, because location _in_view is an internal method.