Capybara with Selenium Webdriver click_link does not work when link text has line break

Question

I am using Selenium2 with Capybara 1.0.0, WebDriver and Cucumber 1.0.0 running on a Windows 7 workstation.

I have run into a problem with my Cucumber tests where certain links simply don't get clicked. We have several hundred scenarios and a handful fails on the click_link command. I discovered that these links have a line-break in the link text because the link text is wider than the area it occupies. The problem is happening on Firefox and IE (I have not checked any other browsers).

I found this information which seems to cover this topic: Apparently the WebDriver clicks on the center point of the rectangular space for the link. When the link text breaks so that only one word ends up on the second line the WebDriver will click outside the link.

I am about to try to implement the work-around they mention in the ticket (send an ENTER key stroke on the link) but that must be a temporary fix. Does anyone know of a better way to get around this problem? I would think a lot of people would run into to this problem, or am I doing something wrong?

Well, the work-around they specify does not seem to work for me. I am currently stuck until they release a fix. Has anyone been able to figure out a different work-around for this issue? — Per Cedersund

Per Cedersund Per Cedersund · Accepted Answer · 2011-08-04T21:03:54

I finally got the work-around to work. Problem was sending the key 'enter', when it should have been 'return'.

For those of you using Capybara and Cucumber, this works:

When /^I click "(.*)"$/ do |linkText|
     link=find_link(linkText)
     link.native.send_keys([:return])
end

Capybara with Selenium Webdriver click_link does not work when link text has line break

1 Answers