Sep 08
25

Simulating clicks on GWT push buttons with Selenium RC

8 Comments

I’ve come across an oddity in my functional tests for a
GWT application I am working on.

The Selenium RC test I have should
simulate a user clicking on a button, implemented as a GWT PushButton
(com.google.gwt.user.client.ui.PushButton). The problem is that the click on the
button never seemed to work using the following code

selenium.click(BUTTON_ID);

A GWT PushButton is not a standard HTML <input type="submit" ...> or a
<button ...> rather it is a styled button constructed from DIV and other
HTML tags.

After some head scratching and experimentation it turns out that the click can be actioned
using the following code.

selenium.mouseOver(BUTTON_ID);
selenium.mouseDown(BUTTON_ID);
selenium.mouseUp(BUTTON_ID);

Not exactly rocket science in the end, but it took a while to work out. Hopefully
this will save someone else having to work it out from scratch.

This entry was posted on September 25, 2008 at 12:00 am. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Posted in Black Pepper Blog by John Eccleston 8 Comments

8 Responses to "Simulating clicks on GWT push buttons with Selenium RC"

  • Aaron Novstrup says:
    October 21, 2008 at 6:49 pm

    This workaround worked for me with GWT 1.4.61, but it broke in IE when I upgraded to GWT 1.5.2. Know of any other workaround, short of invoking the event handler directly through javascript?

  • John Eccleston says:
    October 24, 2008 at 2:32 pm

    Hi Aaron,

    thanks for the feedback. I tested this with GWT 1.5.2 on Firefox. I’ll have a play with IE, and also with GWT 1.5.3

  • Thibaut says:
    November 3, 2008 at 9:23 am

    Hello, I made some experiments.

    IE6 and GWT 1.4.? : The ‘mouseOver/mouseDown/mouseUp’ method works perfectly.

    IE7 and GWT 1.5.3 : The ‘mouseOver/mouseDown/mouseUp’ method does NOT work at all. But it will work again with this:

    selenium.focus(pLocator);
    selenium.keyPress(pLocator, “r”);

    Hope this can help.

  • pio says:
    April 24, 2009 at 7:07 am

    Hello,
    I didn’t use it in GWT 1.5.3 but I have problem in GWT 1.6. with clicking CustomButton (for example PushButton).
    Neither ‘mouseOver/mouseDown/mouseUp’ nor ‘focus/heyPress’ method work in IE7

    Do you have any workaround for it?

  • VladS says:
    November 12, 2009 at 7:09 am

    protected void click(String locator) {
    if (locator.endsWith(“PushButton”)) {
    // Special case for cool buttons
    if (isTargetFirefox()) {
    // Work OK in FF 3.5.
    String imageLocator = “//div[@id='" + locator + "']/img”;
    selenium.mouseOver(imageLocator);
    selenium.mouseDown(imageLocator);
    selenium.mouseUp(imageLocator);
    } else {
    // Work OK in IE7
    String imageLocator = “//div[@id='" + locator + "'][1][1]“;
    selenium.focus(imageLocator);
    selenium.keyPressNative(Integer.toString(KeyEvent.VK_SPACE));
    }
    } else {
    selenium.click(locator);
    }
    }

  • Artem says:
    November 25, 2010 at 11:47 am

    I’ve found that in IE8 64bit and Windows 7 works perfect the next code:

    mouseDownAt(locator, “10,10″);
    mouseUpAt(locator, “10,10″);

  • Alex HP says:
    December 7, 2010 at 2:44 pm

    Thank you. It works well for a treview too.

  • Rene says:
    January 5, 2011 at 8:19 pm

    Hi,
    I tried the code given by Vlad but It doesn’t work for my case. I have question about function “isTargetFirefox” where I can find it in Java library or Selenium.
    on
    In my case, the button is not button but some div tag link with an image found in TR tag. I give Xpath link to the selenium function but It doesn’t make the job. Button is highlighted.

    One thing that I could be important, I have an eventproxy in my div element that point on a function that I can’t find it

    GWT is used to develop web application that I have to make automated test with Firefox, Internet Explorer and other web browser.

    I tried to instantiate GWT button object on my Java application that runs with JUnit. I would take the control of this button and force click. Here is an example:
    Button btnClick = new Button(buttonName);
    btnClick.getElement().setId(buttonName);
    btnClick.click();
    Is there something incorrect ? I got an exception about instantiation of object.

    Thanks in advance for the help and excuse for my english.

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