A way around Element cannot be scrolled into view - Watir-webdriver with Ruby

Question

So, we have the following code in our page:

<div class="toggle-wrapper">
  <input id="HasRegistration_true" class="registration_required toggle" type="radio" value="True" name="HasRegistration" data-val-required="The HasRegistration field is required." data-val="true">
  <label for="HasRegistration_true" class="">On</label>
  <input id="HasRegistration_false" class="registration_required toggle" type="radio" value="False" name="HasRegistration" checked="checked">
  <label class="checked" for="HasRegistration_false">Off</label>
</div>

These are 2 radio buttons. 'On' and 'Off'. 'Off' is the default value.

Using Watir-webdriver and Ruby, we want to select the 'On' radio button. We do so like this:

browser.radio(:id => "HasRegistration_true").set

But in doing so, we get the following error:

`WebElement.clickElement': Element cannot be scrolled into view:[object HTMLInputElement] (Selenium::WebDriver::Error::MoveTargetOutOfBoundsError)

We know Selenium 2 scrolls the page to the element, so trying to scroll down is useless. We are always using the latest releases of watir-webdriver and ruby.

We can't change the HTML of the page since we're QA engineers.

I could not reproduce your problem using a page with just the html provided. Is there more of the page that is required to reproduce your problem? What browser did your try (ie does it occur in all browsers)? You mention using the latest watir-webdriver gem, but did you also ensure that selenium-webdriver is up-to-date? — Justin Ko
You say "We know Selenium 2 scrolls the page to the element..." Can you elaborate on this? How do you "know" this? Are you seeing it happen? — Abe Heward
Is there a lot of Ajax stuff happening on the page? portions of the page being rendered after the browser is done 'loading' Your problem might stem from trying to interact with the element before it is 'ready' or has been moved into some final position on the page, in other words a synchronization issue. You could try the commands manually via IRB and see if they work, if they do, that's usually sign of a sync problem — Chuck van der Linden
I would just recommend to try a different locator. XPATH or css should do it for you and you shouldn't need to scroll or something. Are you using Firebug? — Xwris Stoixeia
I don't understand the part about being QA Engineers. If changing the HTML were the needed solution to automating the tests and removing regression risk, you ought to have the ability to get it changed by bringing the issue up to the team. — Dave McNulla

pjd pjd · Accepted Answer · 2014-04-15T13:13:35

Here are two solutions that have worked for me:

There is a Ruby gem called watir-scroll that can work.

Then

require 'watir-scroll'
browser.scroll.to browser.radio(:id, "HasRegistration_true")

If you don't want to add a gem, my co-worker suggested something that somewhat surprisingly (to me) had the same effect as the above code:

browser.radio(:id, "HasRegistration_true").focus
browser.radio(:id, "HasRegistration_true").set

In my code, ".focus" scrolled straight to the element that was previously not visible. It may work for you as well.

A way around Element cannot be scrolled into view - Watir-webdriver with Ruby

5 Answers