How to Automate Click Using Selenium WebDriver?

Selenium is one of the most popular and powerful tools for automating web applications. Selenium is widely used for automating user interactions like filling out forms, clicking on a button, navigating to a web page, and many more. One of the most common tasks while working with Selenium is clicking on an element as it is widely used for interacting with a web application. So in this article, we’ll learn how to click on an element using Selenium Web Driver.

How to Use the Selenium Click Command?

• Selenium can automatically click on buttons that appear on a webpage.
• We can find the button on the web page by using methods like find_element_by_class_name(), find_element_by_name(), find_element_by_id() etc, following which we can click on it by using the click() method.

# finding the button using ID

button = driver.find_element_by_id(ID)

# clicking on the button

button.click()

Syntax:

Python3

import time
# importing webdriver from selenium
from selenium import webdriver

# Here Chrome will be used
driver = webdriver.Chrome()

# URL of website
url = "https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/"

# Opening the website
driver.get(url)

# getting the button by class name
button = driver.find_element_by_class_name("slide-out-btn")

# clicking on the button
button.click()

Output:

This will click on the button and a popup will be shown. 

Steps of Automation on “Click” element using Selenium WebDriver

While working with Selenium Web Driver one of the most common tasks we see is clicking on an element.

Step 1: Setting up the Selenium in Python.

Make sure to install Python in your system then we’ll install Selenium using the following command in the terminal.

pip install Selenium

Step 2: Installing the necessary modules.

Now that we have installed Selenium we’ll need to import Web Driver and By from Selenium.

• WebDriver: Web Driver is an important part of Selenium, it provides a way to interact with the web browser programmatically. It acts as a bridge between our automation script and the Web Browser
• By: By is a class in Selenium that provides a way to locate an element on a web page using various locating Strategies.

from selenium import webdriver

from selenium.webdriver.common.by import By

Step 3: Initializing the Web Driver and navigating to the web page.

Now that we have imported the required modules we will create an instance of the web driver and navigate to the web page.

Explanation:

webDriver.Chrome() is used to create an instance of the Selenium Web Driver and select Chrome as our automation Web Browser. driver.get(url) is a method of selenium web driver which is used to navigate to the specified url.

Python

from selenium import webdriver
from selenium.webdriver.common.by import By

driver=webdriver.Chrome()
url="http://127.0.0.1:5500/index.html"
driver.get(url)

Step 4: Finding an element.

In order to click on an element we first need to find an element on a webpage using Selenium Web Driver using find_element() method and BY.

• find_element()- find_element is a method in Selenium which is used to find an element using a locating Strategy. It return an instance of the element if found .
• By- By is a class in Selenium which provides a way to locate an element on web page.

Python

from selenium import webdriver
from selenium.webdriver.common.by import By

driver = webdriver.Chrome()
url = "http://127.0.0.1:5500/index.html"
driver.get(url)
name_input = driver.find_element(By.NAME, "name")

Output:

Output of click on element using Selenium WebDriver

Note: Here we have used name locating strategy to locate an element by its name attribute. Refer to Locating Strategies in Selenium to know more about locating Strategies.

Step 5: Click on an element.

• Now that we have locate the element we can now used .click() element to click on an element on a web page.
• .click(): It is a method in Selenium which is used to click on an element on a web page.

Python

from selenium import webdriver
from selenium.webdriver.common.by import By

driver = webdriver.Chrome()
url = "http://127.0.0.1:5500/index.html"
driver.get(url)
name_input = driver.find_element(By.NAME, "name")
name_input.click()

Output:

Output click on an element using Selenium WebDriver

Advanced Click Techniques – Using send_keys() with Keys.CONTROL

This approach simulates a right-click using keyboard keys (typically Ctrl + Enter). However, it’s less reliable and might not work on all websites or browsers. Use it with caution and consider context_click() as the primary method.

Python3

print("GFG")
from selenium import webdriver
from selenium.webdriver.common.keys import Keys

driver = webdriver.Chrome()  
driver.get("https://geeksforgeeks.com")

element = driver.find_element_by_id("right_click_menu")

element.send_keys(Keys.CONTROL + Keys.RETURN)

driver.quit()

By understanding these techniques and their use cases, you can effectively perform right-click operations on elements in your Selenium tests.

Conclusion

Selenium is a powerful tool for automating web applicating and knowing how to click on an element using selenium is a fundamental skill for web automation and testing. Throughout the article, we have learned the important steps, from setting up Selenium and importing the necessary modules to navigating the website, finding the element on a web page, and clicking on the element. But we have to keep in mind that web applications are dynamic and we may need to adapt our code to handle various scenarios and changes in web structure.

FAQ’s

Q.1 : How can I click on an element using Selenium WebDriver?

Ans: The most common way to click on an element is using the click() method of the WebElement object. Simply find the element using your preferred locator strategy (e.g., id, name, xpath) and then call the click() method on it.

Python3

from selenium import webdriver
driver = webdriver.Chrome()  
driver.get("https://geeksforgeeks.com")
element = driver.find_element_by_id("my_button")
element.click()
driver.quit()

Q.2 : Are there ways to click other than a simple left-click?

Ans: Yes! Selenium allows you to simulate different click actions:

• Right-click: Use the context_click() method from ActionChains.
• Double-click: Create an ActionChains object and use the double_click() method.

Python3

from selenium import webdriver
from selenium.webdriver.common.action_chains import ActionChains
driver = webdriver.Chrome()  
driver.get("https://geeksforgeeks.com")
element = driver.find_element_by_id("context_menu_button")
actions = ActionChains(driver)
actions.context_click(element).perform()
driver.quit()

Q.3 : What if the element I want to click is hidden or not clickable?

Ans: In such cases, using click() might not work. You might need to:

• Make the element visible: Use JavaScript with JavascriptExecutor to manipulate the element’s style (e.g., change display: none to display: block).
• Wait for the element to become clickable: Use explicit waits (e.g., WebDriverWait with ExpectedConditions) to ensure the element is ready before clicking.