window.showModalDialog not appear when running with Selenium

Question

In Java web application there's a line of code which opens a popup window whenever clicking on a link and this window has ok/cancle button:

return window.showModalDialog("popupWindow", obj, sFeatures);

I use below code in Selenium to click on the link:

geckoDriver.findElement(By.xpath(".//a[contains(@onclick, 'return openlink(8251')]")).click();

I'm sure the link is clicked successfully but the window.showModalDialog does not open and I can not go on because of that.

What is the problem?

Note that I use GeckoDriver and I also test my application with chromeDriver and ieDriver with no success.

Html tag:

<td width="80" aria-describedby="grdOpeningTrustCartable_" title="openning" style="text-align:center;" role="gridcell">
<a class="gridHighlight" onclick="return openLink(8251,'04/12/17 15:50:00')" href="javascript:void(0);">openning</a>
</td>

Answer 1

It's pretty hard to know what the issue is but I'm assuming when you manually click there's no issue. Be sure that when you manually do it you're not double clicking. If you are then it's either a bug or something you need to add into your method.

Another possibility is that sometimes with links the element appears to be a box shape but will only work if the text is clicked. Selenium clicks the top left hand corner of the element by default. I would recommend creating a separate click method and build up the action, adding in moveToElement() which brings the mouse to the centre of the element, that might solve the issue.

For more details see: https://seleniumhq.github.io/selenium/docs/api/java/org/openqa/selenium/interactions/Actions.html#moveToElement-org.openqa.selenium.WebElement-

Answer 2

It must be due Javascript being executed, while you click on the link. Provide proper wait till javascript execution gets completed and then click on the link, you will surely see the popup.