[selenium-users] Selenium - click() works inconsistently

[u***@comcast.net]

I am trying to click on one of two buttons on a page. Here is athe HTML and
the two xpaths.



div class="button_contianer">

<a class="go_back_button" href-"#">Go Back</a> event

<a class+submit_request_button" href="#">Submit Request</a> event




/html/body/div[3]/div/div[3]/div[6]/div/div[2]/div/div[3]/a[1]

/html/body/div[3]/div/div[3]/div[6]/div/div[2]/div/div[3]/a[2]



I have made numerous attempts to click on the first button with very
limited success – it works maybe 25% of the time. Looking through the code
snippet below, you will be able to see some of the various techniques I
have tried – I commented out some of the attempts when they failed so that
I could remember what I have tried. I have looked extensively online at
previous posts, but can’t find anything that works reliably. The code
executes fine and I can see the button depressed and get routed to the
previous page, but the other actions associated with the click (backing out
the previous step) are not performed. Yet if I pause the code and intervene
by clicking on the button by hand, the routing takes place and the
associated steps are executed. When I click on the second button (with a
virtually identical xpath address) the processing works as it should.



I have tried to find the element by xpath and class name, I have tried
commands with a click() at the end of the find, I have tried
.send_keys(“\n”) at the end of the find and other approaches as well. A
simple find_element_by_xpath with the address for the second button works
100% of the time. I really don’t understand what I am missing and can’t
seem to find another method to try. Thanks for any and all thoughts.



## br.get('chrome://settings/')

##
br.execute_script('chrome.settingsPrivate.setDefaultZoom(1.5);')


br.find_element_by_xpath("/html/body/div[3]/div/div[3]/div[6]/div/div[2]/div/div[3]/a[1]").click()

#br.find_element_by_class_name("go_back_button").send_keys("\n")

# Back out time (test mode)

#print(thread, "Test mode - backing out time(s)")

#result = xpath_search(self, xpath_for_go_back_button, br, 10,
do_click)

##

## button =
br.find_element_by_xpath("//*[@id='main']/div[6]/div/div[2]/div/div[3]/a[1]")

## button.click()

## #sleep(20)

## result =
xpath_search(self,"/html/body/div[3]/div/div[3]/div[6]/div/div[2]/div/div[3]/a[1]",
br, 5, do_click)

## print("Back out time result =", result)

## if result == failure:

## self.queue.put("(" + thread + ") Unable to back out time")

## if thread == "1":

## endApplication(self, br, thread)

#### return

## try:

## WebDriverWait(br,
5).until(EC.element_to_be_clickable((By.XPATH, xpath_for_go_back_button)))

## back_out =
br.find_element_by_xpath(xpath_for_go_back_button)

## back_out.click()

## print("Cancel tee time worked")

## except NoSuchElementException:

## print("Cancel tee time did not work")

## return