[RC] How to click on a link which is under Table

Mohammed Sikander

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Mar 16, 2011, 3:06:30 AM3/16/11

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Hi,

I am not able to click on a link which is under a table. Clicking on this link, application is re-directing to another page.

I tried with the followings:

selenium.click("//table[@id=('dgRedactionSet')]/tbody/tr[2]/td[4]/font/a");

selenium.click("//table[@id=('dgRedactionSet')]/descendant::tr[2]/descendant::td[4]/font/a");

selenium.click("css=table[@id=('dgRedactionSet')] tr:nth-child(2) td:nth-child(4) a");

but none of them are working.

Following is the HTML snippet

<td style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:10px;font-weight:bold;">Name</td><td style="font-family:verdana;font-size:10px;width:50%;">Remarks</td><td>Default</td><td style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:10px;"> </td><td align="Right" style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:10px;"> </td>

</tr><tr class="oline">

<span id="dgRedactionSet__ctl2_Label1">Catalyst</span>

</td><td style="font-family:verdana;font-size:10px;"> </td><td>

</td><td align="Right" style="color:#3300FF;font-family:Verdana;font-size:10px;"><a href="javascript:__doPostBack('dgRedactionSet$_ctl2$_ctl0','')" style="color:#3300FF;">Edit</a></td><td align="Right" style="color:Blue;font-family:Verdana;font-size:10px;"><a href="javascript:__doPostBack('dgRedactionSet$_ctl2$_ctl1','')" style="color:Blue;">Delete</a></td>

</tr>

Please let me know to solve this problem.

Thanks,

Sikander

Mark Collin

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Mar 16, 2011, 4:56:52 AM3/16/11

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You’re not supposed to be able to click on links that a human user can not click. What would this test prove?

Get the devs to expose the link properly, or write a script that performs the pre-requisites for exposing the link before trying to click on it.

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Mohammed Sikander

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Mar 16, 2011, 5:21:41 AM3/16/11

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You’re not supposed to be able to click on links that a human user can not click

I am able to click on this link. Clicking on "Edit" link application is taking to new page.

write a script that performs the pre-requisites for exposing the link before trying to click on it.

I have verified with selenium.isElementPresent("//table[@id=('dgRedactionSet')]/tbody/tr[2]/td[4]/font/a") - no issues, the test got passed.

Only problem was when i try to click on it, giving error like element not found or invalid xpath....

Mark Collin

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Mar 16, 2011, 7:55:23 AM3/16/11

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So you mean a link within the table, rather than under the table?

If I am now understanding you correctly try using this xpath:

//table[@id=’dgRedactionSet’]/descendant::tr[4]/td/a[.=’Edit’]

This will always click on the fourth row in the table which may be good, or may be bad. I suspect you want to click on a row that has specific text in one of the cells, if you wanted to click on the edit link for the row that has the text Catalyst in the first cell you should instead use an xpath like this:

//table[@id=’dgRedactionSet’]/descendant::tr[td[1][.=’Catalyst’]]/td/a[.=’Edit’]

Regards

Mark

Mohammed Sikander

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Mar 16, 2011, 8:31:44 AM3/16/11

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No, its not identifying.

Following all are working fine in IDE but not in RC

selenium.click("//table[@id=('dgRedactionSet')]/tbody/tr[2]/td[4]/font/a");

selenium.click("//table[@id=('dgRedactionSet')]/descendant::tr[2]/descendant::td[4]/font/a");

selenium.click("//table[@id=’dgRedactionSet’]/descendant::tr[4]/td/a[.=’Edit’]")

here is the complete table structure:

<td style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:10px;font-weight:bold;">Name</td><td style="font-family:verdana;font-size:10px;width:50%;">Remarks</td><td>Default</td><td style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:10px;"> </td><td align="Right" style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:10px;"> </td>

</tr>

<span id="dgRedactionSet__ctl2_Label1">Catalyst</span>

</td><td style="font-family:verdana;font-size:10px;"> </td><td>

</td><td align="Right" style="color:#3300FF;font-family:Verdana;font-size:10px;"><a href="javascript:__doPostBack('dgRedactionSet$_ctl2$_ctl0','')" style="color:#3300FF;">Edit</a></td><td align="Right" style="color:Blue;font-family:Verdana;font-size:10px;"><a href="javascript:__doPostBack('dgRedactionSet$_ctl2$_ctl1','')" style="color:Blue;">Delete</a></td>

</tr><tr class="eline">

<span id="dgRedactionSet__ctl3_Label1">Default</span>

</td><td style="font-family:verdana;font-size:10px;">Default Redaction Set</td><td>

</td><td align="Right" style="color:#3300FF;font-family:Verdana;font-size:10px;"><a href="javascript:__doPostBack('dgRedactionSet$_ctl3$_ctl0','')" style="color:#3300FF;">Edit</a></td><td align="Right" style="color:Blue;font-family:Verdana;font-size:10px;"><a href="javascript:__doPostBack('dgRedactionSet$_ctl3$_ctl1','')" style="color:Blue;">Delete</a></td>

</tr><tr class="oline">

<span id="dgRedactionSet__ctl4_Label1">Federal Case Redactions</span>

</td><td style="font-family:verdana;font-size:10px;">Redactions to produce in Federal Case</td><td>

</td><td align="Right" style="color:#3300FF;font-family:Verdana;font-size:10px;"><a href="javascript:__doPostBack('dgRedactionSet$_ctl4$_ctl0','')" style="color:#3300FF;">Edit</a></td><td align="Right" style="color:Blue;font-family:Verdana;font-size:10px;"><a href="javascript:__doPostBack('dgRedactionSet$_ctl4$_ctl1','')" style="color:Blue;">Delete</a></td>

</tr><tr class="eline">

</td><td style="font-family:verdana;font-size:10px;"> </td><td>

</td><td align="Right" style="color:#3300FF;font-family:Verdana;font-size:10px;"><a href="javascript:__doPostBack('dgRedactionSet$_ctl5$_ctl0','')" style="color:#3300FF;">Edit</a></td><td align="Right" style="color:Blue;font-family:Verdana;font-size:10px;"><a href="javascript:__doPostBack('dgRedactionSet$_ctl5$_ctl1','')" style="color:Blue;">Delete</a></td>

</tr><tr class="oline">

<span id="dgRedactionSet__ctl6_Label1">IED Review</span>

</td><td style="font-family:verdana;font-size:10px;"> </td><td>

</td><td align="Right" style="color:#3300FF;font-family:Verdana;font-size:10px;"><a href="javascript:__doPostBack('dgRedactionSet$_ctl6$_ctl0','')" style="color:#3300FF;">Edit</a></td><td align="Right" style="color:Blue;font-family:Verdana;font-size:10px;"><a href="javascript:__doPostBack('dgRedactionSet$_ctl6$_ctl1','')" style="color:Blue;">Delete</a></td>

</tr><tr class="eline">

<span id="dgRedactionSet__ctl7_Label1">Redaction Demo CAP</span>

</td><td style="font-family:verdana;font-size:10px;">Redaction Demo CAP</td><td>

</td><td align="Right" style="color:#3300FF;font-family:Verdana;font-size:10px;"><a href="javascript:__doPostBack('dgRedactionSet$_ctl7$_ctl0','')" style="color:#3300FF;">Edit</a></td><td align="Right" style="color:Blue;font-family:Verdana;font-size:10px;"><a href="javascript:__doPostBack('dgRedactionSet$_ctl7$_ctl1','')" style="color:Blue;">Delete</a></td>

</tr><tr class="oline">

</td><td style="font-family:verdana;font-size:10px;"> </td><td>

</td><td align="Right" style="color:#3300FF;font-family:Verdana;font-size:10px;"><a href="javascript:__doPostBack('dgRedactionSet$_ctl8$_ctl0','')" style="color:#3300FF;">Edit</a></td><td align="Right" style="color:Blue;font-family:Verdana;font-size:10px;"><a href="javascript:__doPostBack('dgRedactionSet$_ctl8$_ctl1','')" style="color:Blue;">Delete</a></td>

</tr>

</table>

Thanks,

Sikander

Mark Collin

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Mar 16, 2011, 10:19:02 AM3/16/11

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If it works in IDE it proves that the xpath is correct, are you sure you are seeing the same markup in the RC window?

Joel Weierman

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Mar 16, 2011, 4:33:22 AM3/16/11

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At the risk of being pedantic, which link are you trying to click on?
I assumed you already tried the following?

"link=Edit"

-Joel

On Mar 16, 12:06 am, Mohammed Sikander <sikander.qure...@gmail.com>
wrote:

Mohammed Sikander

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Mar 17, 2011, 12:21:41 AM3/17/11

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But, "link=Edit" will clicks only for the first "Edit" link, i want to click each "Edit" link and do assertion.

Leonardo Galani

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Mar 17, 2011, 12:40:56 AM3/17/11

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I never saw a xpath with this '

Are you sure that path is corret? did you got it from selenium or xpather.. ? did u tried webdriver findelementbyxpath to see what happend?
Att
Leonardo Barba Galani
Arquiteto de Teste
Java, Selenium e Coca Cola

> name="dgRedactionSet:_ctl2:chkIsDefault" X_onclick="HandleCheckBox(this)" />

> </td><td align="Right"
> style="color:#3300FF;font-family:Verdana;font-size:10px;"><a
> href="javascript:__doPostBack('dgRedactionSet$_ctl2$_ctl0','')"
> style="color:#3300FF;">Edit</a></td><td align="Right"
> style="color:Blue;font-family:Verdana;font-size:10px;"><a
> href="javascript:__doPostBack('dgRedactionSet$_ctl2$_ctl1','')"
> style="color:Blue;">Delete</a></td>
> </tr>
>
> Please let me know to solve this problem.
>
> Thanks,
> Sikander

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Mohammed Sikander

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Mar 18, 2011, 1:05:16 AM3/18/11

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I inspected the element with Xpather.It just works fine in IDE. Even in RC if i say

selenium.isElementPresent("//table[@id=('dgRedactionSet')]/tbody/tr[2]/td[4]/font/a"); - the element is identifying and the test pass.

When i click on the same element i.e.,

selenium.isElementPresent("//table[@id=('dgRedactionSet')]/tbody/tr[2]/td[4]/font/a"); it is giving following error

com.thoughtworks.selenium.SeleniumException: ERROR: Element //table[@id=('dgRedactionSet')]/tbody/tr[2]/td[2]/font/a not found

Anybody got success clicking on a link which is under table? Please let me know the solution for this.

Thanks,

Sikander

Mohammed Sikander

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Mar 18, 2011, 2:28:42 AM3/18/11

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Just corrected....

On 18 March 2011 10:35, Mohammed Sikander <sikander...@gmail.com> wrote:

I inspected the element with Xpather.It just works fine in IDE. Even in RC if i say
selenium.isElementPresent("//table[@id=('dgRedactionSet')]/tbody/tr[2]/td[4]/font/a"); - the element is identifying and the test pass.

When i click on the same element i.e.,

selenium.click("//table[@id=('dgRedactionSet')]/tbody/tr[2]/td[4]/font/a"); it is giving following error

Mark Collin

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Mar 18, 2011, 4:34:23 AM3/18/11

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Where does the test fail if you do:

assertTrue(selenium.isElementPresent("//table[@id=('dgRedactionSet')]/tbody/tr[2]/td[4]/font/a"));

I suspect the element is not there but because you are not checking the result returned by isElementPresent you are not realising that it is returning false.

Regards

Mark

Mohammed Sikander

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Mar 18, 2011, 4:43:38 AM3/18/11

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Yes, its failing to identify the element now. Before i haven't included "AssertTrue"

but, what should be the correct Xpath or CSS to click on "Edit" button?

Thanks,

Sikander

Mark Collin

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Mar 18, 2011, 4:56:20 AM3/18/11

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I’ll refer you back to my previous mail which gave you the following XPath:

//table[@id=’dgRedactionSet’]/descendant::tr[td[1][.=’Catalyst’]]/td/a[.=’Edit’]

If this doesn’t work the HTML is not as previously specified, or you are loading the page you think you are loading.

Mohammed Sikander

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Mar 18, 2011, 7:33:59 AM3/18/11

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No, its not identifying..

But i found the alternative for this, but this was not i am looking for...

assertTrue(selenium.isElementPresent("//a[contains(@href,'ctl2$_ctl0')]"));

Mark Collin

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Mar 18, 2011, 7:42:41 AM3/18/11

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That is scanning through every anchor element in the page and checking where the anchor links to. If you have multiple anchors that link to the same place this will result in selenium just grabbing the first one it finds no matter where it is (so it may not pick up one in a table never mind one in the row you are specifically looking for).

If you are trying to check that a specific link exists in a specific place this is not a good thing to do. Also the query is bad from a performance point of view as it will scan the entire DOM every time rather than scanning a section of the DOM. If you are running tests in a browser with a bad JavaScript implementation (I’m looking at you IE6) you will notice the tests are taking much longer by using an xpath like this.

Do you have a link to the live site that is publically accessible?

Mohammed Sikander

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Mar 18, 2011, 8:40:46 AM3/18/11

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No, it is not publicly available site.

Right now i am moving forward with this solution. Need to investigate more on this.

Are you/anybody able to successfully click on a link which is inside the table?

Please let me know...

Mark Collin

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Mar 18, 2011, 9:47:02 AM3/18/11

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Yup, do it all the time with XPaths like the one I supplied to you.

One other option is run a W3C validation on the page you are testing and see
if it throws up any errors relating to unclosed elements. If you have an
unclosed element hiding away in there somewhere it could be breaking the DOM
which would cause the XPath to fail even though it should work from the
snippet of HTML that we have seen.

Please let me know...

> *From:* seleniu...@googlegroups.com [mailto:
> seleniu...@googlegroups.com] *On Behalf Of *Mohammed Sikander
> *Sent:* 18 March 2011 11:34
>
> *To:* seleniu...@googlegroups.com
> *Subject:* Re: Re: [selenium-users] Re: How to click on a link which

> is under Table
>
>
>
> No, its not identifying..
>
>
>

> But i found the alternative for this, but this was not i am looking for..=

Piotr K

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Mar 18, 2011, 10:00:15 AM3/18/11

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Hi Mohammed,

I have the same problem. Do you have some solution already?

Please let me know...

On 18 Mar, 14:47, "Mark Collin" <m...@ardescosolutions.com> wrote:
> Yup, do it all the time with XPaths like the one I supplied to you.
>
> One other option is run a W3C validation on the page you are testing and see
> if it throws up any errors relating to unclosed elements. If you have an
> unclosed element hiding away in there somewhere it could be breaking the DOM
> which would cause the XPath to fail even though it should work from the
> snippet of HTML that we have seen.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: seleniu...@googlegroups.com
>
> [mailto:seleniu...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Mohammed Sikander
> Sent: 18 March 2011 12:41
> To: seleniu...@googlegroups.com
> Subject: Re: Re: [selenium-users] Re: How to click on a link which is under
> Table
>
> No, it is not publicly available site.
>
> Right now i am moving forward with this solution. Need to investigate more
> on this.
>
> Are you/anybody able to successfully click on a link which is inside the
> table?
>
> Please let me know...
>

> On 18 March 2011 17:12, Mark Collin <m...@ardescosolutions.com> wrote:
>
> > That is scanning through every anchor element in the page and checking
> > where the anchor links to. If you have multiple anchors that link to
> > the same place this will result in selenium just grabbing the first
> > one it finds no matter where it is (so it may not pick up one in a
> > table never mind one in the row you are specifically looking for).
>
> > If you are trying to check that a specific link exists in a specific
> > place this is not a good thing to do. Also the query is bad from a
> > performance point of view as it will scan the entire DOM every time
> > rather than scanning a section of the DOM. If you are running tests
> > in a browser with a bad JavaScript implementation (I'm looking at you
> > IE6) you will notice the tests are taking much longer by using an xpath
> like this.
>
> > Do you have a link to the live site that is publically accessible?
>
> > *From:* seleniu...@googlegroups.com [mailto:
> > seleniu...@googlegroups.com] *On Behalf Of *Mohammed Sikander
> > *Sent:* 18 March 2011 11:34
>
> > *To:* seleniu...@googlegroups.com
> > *Subject:* Re: Re: [selenium-users] Re: How to click on a link which
> > is under Table
>
> > No, its not identifying..
>
> > But i found the alternative for this, but this was not i am looking for..=
>
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Michael Yang

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Mar 18, 2011, 11:16:09 AM3/18/11

to seleniu...@googlegroups.com, Mohammed Sikander

I have no problem clicking on the links in each row in the table.

Try the xpath like this:

selenium.click("//td/span[text()='Default']/following::a[text()='Edit']");

It means the 'Edit' link in the row that begins with the 'Default' text.

For the other rows, just replace the 'Default' to the Name value in that row.

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