As part of my Selenium test for a login function, I would like to click a button by identifying its coordinates and instructing Selenium to click at those coordinates. This would be done without identifying the element itself (via id, xpath, etc).
I understand there are other more efficient ways to run a click command, but I'm looking to specifically use this approach to best match the user experience. Thanks.
There is a way to do this. Using the ActionChains API you can move the mouse over a containing element, adjust by some offset (relative to the middle of that element) to put the "cursor" over the desired button (or other element), and then click at that location. Here's how to do it using webdriver in Python:
from selenium import webdriver
from selenium.webdriver.common.action_chains import ActionChains
browser = webdriver.Chrome()
elem = browser.find_element_by_selector(".some > selector")
ac = ActionChains(browser)
ac.move_to_element(elem).move_by_offset(x_offset, y_offset).click().perform()
Y'all are much to quick to dismiss the question. There are a number of reasons one might to need to click at a specific location, rather than on an element. In my case I have an SVG bar chart with an overlay element that catches all the clicks. I want to simulate a click over one of the bars, but since the overlay is there Selenium can't click on the element itself. This technique would also be valuable for imagemaps.
In C# API you use actions
var element = driver.FindElement(By...);
new Actions(driver).moveToElement(element).moveByOffset(dx, dy).click().perform();
Although it is best to just use simple Id, CSS, Xpath selectors when possible. But the functionality is there when needed (i.e. clicking elements in certain geographic places for functionality).
I first used the JavaScript code, it worked amazingly until a website did not click.
So I've found this solution:
First, import ActionChains for Python & active it:
from selenium.webdriver.common.action_chains import ActionChains
actions = ActionChains(driver)
To click on a specific point in your sessions use this:
actions.move_by_offset(X coordinates, Y coordinates).click().perform()
NOTE: The code above will only work if the mouse has not been touched, to reset the mouse coordinates use this:
actions.move_to_element_with_offset(driver.find_element_by_tag_name('body'), 0,0))
In Full:
actions.move_to_element_with_offset(driver.find_element_by_tag_name('body'), 0,0)
actions.move_by_offset(X coordinates, Y coordinates).click().perform()
This can be done using Actions class in java
Use following code -
new Actions(driver).moveByOffset(x coordinate, y coordinate).click().build().perform();
Note: Selenium 3 doesn't support Actions class for geckodriver
Also, note that x and y co-ordinates are relative values from current mouse position. Assuming mouse co-ordinates are at (0,0) to start with, if you want to use absolute values, you can perform the below action immediately after you clicked on it using the above code.
new Actions(driver).moveByOffset(-x coordinate, -y coordinate).perform();
If using a commercial add-on to Selenium is an option for you, this is possible: Suppose your button is at coordinates x=123, y=456. Then you can use Helium to click on the element at these coordinates as follows:
from helium.api import *
# Tell Helium about your WebDriver instance:
set_driver(driver)
click(Point(123, 456))
(I am one of Helium's authors.)
This worked for me in Java for clicking on coordinates irrespective on any elements.
Actions actions = new Actions(driver);
actions.moveToElement(driver.findElement(By.tagName("body")), 0, 0);
actions.moveByOffset(xCoordinate, yCoordinate).click().build().perform();
Second line of code will reset your cursor to the top left corner of the browser view and last line will click on the x,y coordinates provided as parameter.
I used the Actions Class like many listed above, but what I found helpful was if I need find a relative position from the element I used Firefox Add-On Measurit to get the relative coordinates. For example:
IWebDriver driver = new FirefoxDriver();
driver.Url = @"https://scm.commerceinterface.com/accounts/login/?next=/remittance_center/";
var target = driver.FindElement(By.Id("loginAsEU"));
Actions builder = new Actions(driver);
builder.MoveToElement(target , -375 , -436).Click().Build().Perform();
I got the -375, -436 from clicking on an element and then dragging backwards until I reached the point I needed to click. The coordinates that MeasureIT said I just subtracted. In my example above, the only element I had on the page that was clickable was the "loginAsEu" link. So I started from there.
import pyautogui
from selenium import webdriver
driver = webdriver.Chrome(chrome_options=options)
driver.maximize_window() #maximize the browser window
driver.implicitly_wait(30)
driver.get(url)
height=driver.get_window_size()['height']
#get browser navigation panel height
browser_navigation_panel_height = driver.execute_script('return window.outerHeight - window.innerHeight;')
act_y=y%height
scroll_Y=y/height
#scroll down page until y_off is visible
try:
driver.execute_script("window.scrollTo(0, "+str(scroll_Y*height)+")")
except Exception as e:
print "Exception"
#pyautogui used to generate click by passing x,y coordinates
pyautogui.FAILSAFE=False
pyautogui.moveTo(x,act_y+browser_navigation_panel_height)
pyautogui.click(x,act_y+browser_navigation_panel_height,clicks=1,interval=0.0,button="left")
This is worked for me. Hope, It will work for you guys :)...
I used AutoIt to do it.
using AutoIt;
AutoItX.MouseClick("LEFT",150,150,1,0);//1: click once, 0: Move instantaneous
To add to this because I was struggling with this for a while. These are the steps I took:
document.onclick = function(e)
{
var x = e.pageX;
var y = e.pageY;
alert("User clicked at position (" + x + "," + y + ")")
};
WebDriverWait(DRIVER GOES HERE, 10).until(EC.element_to_be_clickable(YOUR ELEMENT LOCATOR GOES HERE))
actions = ActionChains(DRIVER GOES HERE)
actions.move_by_offset(X, Y).click().perform()
If all other methods mentioned on this page failed and you are using python, I suggest you use the mouse module to do it in a more native way instead. The code would be as simple as
import mouse
mouse.move("547", "508")
mouse.click(button='left')
You can also use the keyboard module to simulate keyboard actions
import keyboard
keyboard.write('The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.')
To find the coordinate of the mouse, you can use the follow JavaScript Code.
document.onclick=function(event) {
var x = event.screenX ;
var y = event.screenY;
console.log(x, y)
}
If you don't like screenX, you can use pageX or clientX. More on here
P.S. I come across a website that prevents programmatic interactions with JavaScript/DOM/Selenium. This is probably a robot prevention mechanism. However, there is no way for them to ban OS actions.
Selenium::WebDriver has PointerActions module which includes a number of actions you can chain and/or trigger without specifying the element, eg. move_to_location or move_by. See detailed specs here. As you can see, you can only use actual coordinates. I am sure this interface is implemented in other languages / libraries accordingly.
My short reply may echo some other comments here, but I just wanted to provide a link for reference.
If you can see the source code of page, its always the best option to refer to the button by its id or NAME attribute. For example you have button "Login" looking like this:
<input type="submit" name="login" id="login" />
In that case is best way to do
selenium.click(id="login");
Just out of the curiosity - isnt that HTTP basic authentification? In that case maybe look at this: http://code.google.com/p/selenium/issues/detail?id=34
