Selenium WebDriver clicking on hidden element

Question

Hi I would like to know how to click on hidden element and/or disable element by using Selenium WebDriver.

I know with selenium 1 I can do this as below:

Answer 1

It may not fit your needs, but another solution for some might be to alter the CSS for hiding an element.

Whilst Selenium won't find an element with display: none; it will find an element with the following:

.hide {
    position: absolute;
    top: -99em;
    left: -99em;
}

Then rather than using jQuery.show/hide/toggle in your app, you would use jQuery.toggleClass('hide', true/false/unset_to_toggle).

Answer 2

There is a easier way to work around the problem using JavascriptExecutor.

For example:

document.getElementsByClassName('post-tag')[0].click();

The above javascript would click on the "Selenium" tag on the top right of this page (next to your question), even if it were hidden (hypothetically).

All you need to do is issue this JS instruction via the JavascriptExecutor interface like so:

(JavascriptExecutor(webdriver)).executeScript("document.getElementsByClassName('post-tag')[0].click();");

This would use the JS sandbox and synthetic click event to perform the click action. Although it defeats the purpose of WebDriver user activity simulation, you can use it in niche scenarios like in your case to good effect.

Answer 3

there is one answer but multiple suggestions:

Answer: use selenium backed driver to click on the hidden element using something like

Selenium selenium = new WebDriverBackedSelenium(driver, baseUrl);
selenium.clickAt("xpath=//area[@alt='Mercury']", clickPoint);

Suggestion 1: to create fake data specially if there's a lot to be created and you are looking for FOSS go for JMeter.

Suggestion2: to check javascript turned off disable javascript in the firefox instance itself e.g.

DesiredCapabilities capabilities = DesiredCapabilities.firefox();
capabilities.setJavascriptEnabled(false);