move_to_element method – Action Chains in Selenium Python

Selenium’s Python Module is built to perform automated testing with Python. ActionChains are a way to automate low-level interactions such as mouse movements, mouse button actions, keypress, and context menu interactions. This is useful for doing more complex actions like hover over and drag and drop. Action chain methods are used by advanced scripts where we need to drag an element, click an element, double click, etc.
This article revolves around move_to_element method on Action Chains in Python Selenium. move_to_element method is used to move the mouse to the middle of an element.
Syntax –

move_to_element(to_element)

Args –

• to_element: The WebElement to move to.

Example –

<input type ="text" name ="passwd" id ="passwd-id" />

To find an element one needs to use one of the locating strategies, For example,

element = driver.find_element_by_id("passwd-id")
element = driver.find_element_by_name("passwd")

Now one can use move_to_element method as an Action chain as below –

move_to_element(to_element=element)

How to use move_to_element Action Chain method in Selenium Python ?

To demonstrate, move_to_element method of Action Chains in Selenium Python. Let’ s visit https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/ and operate on an element.

Program –

# import webdriver
from selenium import webdriver

# import Action chains
from selenium.webdriver.common.action_chains import ActionChains

# create webdriver object
driver = webdriver.Firefox()

# get geeksforgeeks.org
driver.get("https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/")

# get  element
element = driver.find_element_by_link_text("Courses")

# create action chain object
action = ActionChains(driver)

# perform the operation
action.move_to_element(element).click().perform()

Output –