Question

How do I resolve the ElementNotInteractableException in Selenium WebDriver?

Answer 1

Hi Abish, ElementNotInteractableException occurs when an element is found, but you can't be interacted with. For instance, you may not be able to click or send keys. This could happen due to various reasons like element being not visible or displayed, element is off screen or element is behind another element or hidden. So, you can perform some of the actions to make element interactable:

1. Wait until an element is visible / clickable

WebDriverWait wait = new WebDriverWait(driver, timeout);
wait.until(ExpectedConditions.visibilityOf(element)); 
wait.until(ExpectedConditions.elementToBeClickable(element));

2. Scroll until the element is within the the display

Actions action = new Actions(driver);
action.moveToElement(element);

3. Use JS Executor to interact directly with the DOM

JavascriptExecutor javascript = (JavascriptExecutor) driver;
javascript.executeScript("var element = document.querySelector('locator'); element.value = 'whatever';")

You can refer to the Selenium certification for further understanding.

Comments

There where 03 possible solutions for it:

1. When page is rendering at that time selenium trying to click. Solution is add explicit wait
2. If developer has developed website in a such way like element is not interact then find it's parent element and using xpath child function you can implement it. Example: //div[contains(@class = 'abc')]::*

3. Find element's coordinate and try to click on element using coordinate

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Hi Shreyans, thank you for your answer. You explained it really well.

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3rd point can u explain detailed.

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Hey, did you mean @Abha's answer or @shreyan's answer?

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HI,

I tried this way of 3 steps but getting issue that cannot set property value of null

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Hello,

Which 3 steps are you talking about? @ Abha solution or @Shreyans shah? and  share more information about your problem

Answer 2

ElementNotInteractableException is caused when an element is found, but you can not interact with it. For instance, you may not be able to click or send keys.

There could be several reasons for this:

1. The element is not visible / not displayed
2. The element is off-screen
3. The element is behind another element or hidden
4. Some other action needs to be performed by the user first to enable it.

Strategies that may work to make it interactable (depending on the circumstance.)

1. Wait until an element is visible / clickable

• WebDriverWait wait = new WebDriverWait(driver, timeout); 

• wait.until(ExpectedConditions.visibilityOf(element));  

• wait.until(ExpectedConditions.elementToBeClickable(element)); 

2. Scroll until the element is within the the display

• Actions action = new Actions(driver); 

• action.moveToElement(element); 

3. Use javascript to interact directly with the DOM

• JavascriptExecutor javascript = (JavascriptExecutor) driver; 

• javascript.executeScript("var element = document.querySelector('locator'); element.value = 'whatever';") 

4. Perform whatever other action is necessary and possibly wait until after that.

Answer 3

ElementNotInteractableException

ElementNotInteractableException is the W3C exception which is thrown to indicate that although an element is present on the HTML DOM, it is not in a state that can be interacted with.

Reasons & Solutions :

The reason for ElementNotInteractableException to occur can be numerous.

1. Temporary Overlay of other WebElement over the WebElement of our interest :

   In this case, the direct solution would have been to induce ExplicitWait i.e. WebDriverWait in combination with ExpectedCondition as invisibilityOfElementLocated as folllows:

   WebDriverWait wait2 = new WebDriverWait(driver, 10);
   wait2.until(ExpectedConditions.invisibilityOfElementLocated(By.xpath("xpath_of_element_to_be_invisible")));
   driver.findElement(By.xpath("xpath_element_to_be_clicked")).click();
   

   A better solution will be to get a bit more granular and instead of using ExpectedCondition as invisibilityOfElementLocated we can use ExpectedCondition as elementToBeClickable as follows:

   WebDriverWait wait1 = new WebDriverWait(driver, 10);
   WebElement element1 = wait1.until(ExpectedConditions.elementToBeClickable(By.xpath("xpath_of_element_to_be_clicked")));
   element1.click();
   

2. Permanent Overlay of other WebElement over the WebElement of our interest :

   If the overlay is a permanent one in this case we have to cast the WebDriver instance as JavascriptExecutor and perform the click operation as follows:

   WebElement ele = driver.findElement(By.xpath("element_xpath"));
   JavascriptExecutor executor = (JavascriptExecutor)driver;
   executor.executeScript("arguments[0].click();", ele);