[SOLVED] How to click a button in an automated test using Selenium and Java

How to click a button in an automated test using Selenium and Java

I'm trying to automate a test using Selenium and I want to click a button using xpath. This is what I'm doing:

WebElement LogInButton = driver.findElement(By.xpath("/login"));
LogInButton.click();

But I get an error that says:

Exception in thread "main" org.openqa.selenium.NoSuchElementException: no such element: Unable to locate element: {"method":"xpath","selector":"/login"}

The only information I have about that button is this:

<a href="/login">Login</a>

and the URL where it redirects to. What am I doing wrong? What would be the correct way of referring to this button? Any help please let me know. Thanks

Solution

To invoke click() on the element you can use either of the following Locator Strategies:

Using linkText:

driver.findElement(By.linkText("Login")).click();

Using cssSelector:

driver.findElement(By.cssSelector("a[href='/login']")).click();

Using xpath:

driver.findElement(By.xpath("//a[@href='/login' and text()='Login']")).click();

Best practices

As you are invoking click() ideally you need to induce WebDriverWait for the elementToBeClickable() and you can use either of the following Locator Strategies:

Using linkText:

new WebDriverWait(driver, 20).until(ExpectedConditions.elementToBeClickable(By.linkText("Login"))).click();

Using cssSelector:

new WebDriverWait(driver, 20).until(ExpectedConditions.elementToBeClickable(By.cssSelector("a[href='/login']"))).click();

Using xpath:

new WebDriverWait(driver, 20).until(ExpectedConditions.elementToBeClickable(By.xpath("//a[@href='/login' and text()='Login']"))).click();

Reference

You can find a couple of relevant discussions in: