Actions class - click(WebElement ele) function does not clicks

Question

I am trying to use the click(WebElement) method of the Actions class to click on an element on the google homepage. The code runs successfully but the click event is not trigerred.

package p1;
import org.openqa.selenium.interactions.Actions;
import org.openqa.selenium.By;
import org.openqa.selenium.WebDriver;
import org.openqa.selenium.firefox.FirefoxDriver;
import org.openqa.selenium.WebElement;



public class ClickLink 
{
    static WebDriver driver;
    public static void main(String[] args)
    {
        try
        {
        driver = new FirefoxDriver();
        driver.manage().window().maximize();
        driver.get("http://www.google.com/");
        WebElement icon = driver.findElement(By.xpath(".//*[@id='gbwa']/div[1]/a"));
        Actions ob = new Actions(driver);
        ob.click(icon);
        System.out.println("Link Clicked !!");
        Thread.sleep(10000);
        driver.close();
        }
        catch(Exception e)
        {
            System.out.println("Exception occurred : "+e);
            driver.close();
        }
    }
}

Here is the result when the above script is executed : [link]

However, when the same element is clicked using the click() method of the WebElement interface, then the click is trigerred.

package p1;
import org.openqa.selenium.By;
import org.openqa.selenium.WebDriver;
import org.openqa.selenium.firefox.FirefoxDriver;
import org.openqa.selenium.WebElement;

public class ClickLink 
{
    static WebDriver driver;
    public static void main(String[] args)
    {
        try
        {
        driver = new FirefoxDriver();
        driver.manage().window().maximize();
        driver.get("http://www.google.com/");
        WebElement icon = driver.findElement(By.xpath(".//*[@id='gbwa']/div[1]/a"));
        icon.click();
        System.out.println("Link Clicked !!");
        Thread.sleep(10000);
        driver.close();
        }
        catch(Exception e)
        {
            System.out.println("Exception occurred : "+e);
            driver.close();
        }
    }
}

Here is the result when the above script is executed : [link]

Please let me know the reason as to why the click event is not trigerred and resolution for the same.

Answer 1

In web automation, this issue keeps coming. Reasons can be multiple. Let's see them one by one :

1. Actions class not properly utilized : Link to Official documentation

   As the method documentation says,

Call perform() at the end of the method chain to actually perform the actions.

The general way to achieve click using Actions class is below :

actionsObj.moveToElement(element1).click().build().perform()

2. If Actions class fails , sometimes the reason can be that you receive below exception :

   ElementNotInteractableException [object HTMLSpanElement] has no size and location

That can mean two things :

a. Element has not properly rendered: Solution for this is just to use implicit /explicit wait

• Implicit wait :

  driver.manage().timeouts().implicitlyWait(50, TimeUnit.SECONDS);

• Explicit wait :

  WebDriverWait wait=new WebDriverWait(driver, 20); element1 = wait.until(ExpectedConditions.elementToBeClickable(By.className("fa-stack-1x")));

b. Element has rendered but it is not in the visible part of the screen: Solution is just to scroll till the element. Based on the version of Selenium it can be handled in different ways but I will provide a solution that works in all versions :

    JavascriptExecutor executor = (JavascriptExecutor) driver;
    executor.executeScript("arguments[0].scrollIntoView(true);", element1);

1. Suppose all this fails then another way is to again make use of Javascript executor as following :

   executor.executeScript("arguments[0].click();", element1);

2. If you still can't click , then it could again mean two things :

1. Iframe

Check the DOM to see if the element you are inspecting lives in any frame. If that is true then you would need to switch to this frame before attempting any operation.

    driver.switchTo().frame("a077aa5e"); //switching the frame by ID
    System.out.println("********We are switching to the iframe*******");
    driver.findElement(By.xpath("html/body/a/img")).click();

2. New tab

If a new tab has opened up and the element exists on it then you again need to code something like below to switch to it before attempting operation.

String parent = driver.getWindowHandle();
driver.findElement(By.partialLinkText("Continue")).click();
Set<String> s = driver.getWindowHandles();
// Now iterate using Iterator
Iterator<String> I1 = s.iterator();
while (I1.hasNext()) {
String child_window = I1.next();
if (!parent.equals(child_window)) {
    driver.switchTo().window(child_window);
    element1.click() 
}

Answer 2

You have made a simple mistake of not building and performing the Action. Note that you have created an instance of Actions class ob. As the name signifies the Actions class defines a set of sequential actions to be performed. So you have to build() your actions to create a single Action and then perform() the action.

The below code should work!!

WebElement icon = driver.findElement(By.xpath(".//*[@id='gbwa']/div[1]/a"));
Actions ob = new Actions(driver);
ob.click(icon);
Action action  = ob.build();
action.perform();

If you look at the code given below to first move to the icon element and then click the element would better explain the Actions class.

Actions ob = new Actions(driver);
ob.moveToElement(icon);
ob.click(icon);
Action action  = ob.build();
action.perform();

Answer 3

Here is what you need to do:

ob.click(icon).build().perform();

also you can do this:

ob.moveToElement(icon).click().build().perform();