How to use selenium webdriver to click on links

Question

How can I use selenium webdriver to get all links from the page that have the property a[href*=/simulation/form/] and then open and close each of them?

I tried the following code but it returns TypeError: link.click is not a function

var simLinks = driver.findElements(By.css('a[href*=/simulation/form/]'));
for(var link in simLinks){
 link.click();
 driver.wait(30000);
 driver.back();
}

If I do console.log(simLinks.length) it returns undefined

Instead, it works perfect if I try to open a single link of that type:

var simLinks = driver.findElement(By.css('a[href*=/simulation/form/]')).click();

• sachsure: what is the type of simLinks?
• Valip: simLinks should contain all elements with property 'a[href*=/simulation/form/]...
• Valip: I see that in Java it would be done like List<WebElement> simLinks = driver.findElements(By.css('a[href*=/simulation/form/]'));, but I'm using javascript.

Answer 1

Use the util.inspect() function to inspect objects:

const util = require('util');
...
console.log(util.inspect(simLinks));

Once you do that, you will see that simLinks is a ManagedPromise, so you need to change your code as follows to make it work:

driver.findElements(By.css('a[href*="/simulation/form/"]')).then(function (simLinks) {
 for (let link of simLinks) {
 link.click();
 driver.wait(until.urlContains('/simulation/form/', 30000));
 driver.navigate().back();
 }
});

The problem with that, however, is that only the first click works, but once you navigate back there is a legitimate StaleElementReferenceError - the page has indeed changed and the next element in the loop is no longer attached to the visible page. Therefore, a better strategy would be to collect the link addresses instead and use these with driver.navigate().to(link):

driver.findElements(By.css('a[href*="/simulation/form/"]')).then(function (simLinks) {
 var hrefs = simLinks.map(link => link.getAttribute('href'));
 for (let link of hrefs) {
 driver.navigate().to(link);
 driver.wait(until.urlContains('/simulation/form/', 30000));
 driver.navigate().back();
 }
});

• Valip: I still got that error TypeError: link.click is not a function, but the good thing is that the console returns 2 WebElement objects, which are my links
• Lima Mairante: Ah, indeed, simLinks is an array. I fixed the answer accordingly, should work now :).
• Valip: Thank you, this should do it but now it throws ElementNotVisibleError. How comes that the element is not visible since it gets logged in the console?
• Valip: FYI I also tried to get the links as follows By.css('a[data-ga-name="Property Summary: Edit Simulation"]'. This is how a link looks on the page: <a href="/simulation/form/15760?p=7747&amp;t=3" data-ga-name="Property Summary: Edit Simulation">
• Lima Mairante: I tried the example with Google and the first click works. But once you navigate back there is a legitimate StaleElementReferenceError - the page has indeed changed and the next element in the loop is no longer attached to the visible page. I'll think a bit how to deal with this...

Answer 2

I believe you should be using:

console.log(simLinks.size())

I don't know if the () is required in javascript - it is in java.

• Valip: I'm using javascript, not java