Problem clicking an href=javascript using selenium web drive python

Question

I am having an problem with clicking an menu item that has an link with an href with selenium web drive.

<a class="a-link-normal" href="javascript:;">Fiction</a>

Here is my code:

driver.find_element_by_xpath('//*[@id="div-fiction"]/span/a').click()

This only seem to hover over the linked name and highlight it but does not trigger the javascript. I tried reading all the other solutions but it all lead to just using the click() method. Does anyone know what is wrong or a different approach to this.

Answer 1

The desired element seems to be a JavaScript enabled element so you need to induce WebDriverWait for the desired element to be clickable and you can use either of the following solutions:

• LINK_TEXT:

  WebDriverWait(driver, 20).until(EC.element_to_be_clickable((By.LINK_TEXT, "Fiction"))).click()
  

• XPATH:

  WebDriverWait(driver, 20).until(EC.element_to_be_clickable((By.XPATH, "//a[@class='a-link-normal' and contains(.,'Fiction')]"))).click()
  

Answer 2

You may try this:

driver.execute_script("arguments[0].click();", webelement to click)