Button won't click even though I can see it's taking me to the button when doing automation

Question

My code which takes me to the button and highlights it (I'm running java scripts within Eclipse)

driver.findElement(By.xpath("//button[contains(text(),'Save')]")).click();

My HTML code

<button data-v-7405e096="" type="button" class="pull-right btn btn-primary">Save</button>

The error

Exception in thread "main" org.openqa.selenium.InvalidSelectorException: invalid selector: Unable to locate an element with the xpath expression //button[contains(text(),'Save'‌​)] because of the following error: SyntaxError: Failed to execute 'evaluate' on 'Document': The string '//button[contains(text(),'Save'‌​)]' is not a valid XPath expression

Answer 1

First Check the button is able to be clickable at the moment of your try. Sometimes the page load is very long it's not clickable at the moment.

Use the below code and check

WebDriverWait wait = new WebDriverWait (driver, 30);
wait.until(ExpectedConditions.elementToBeClickable(By.xpath("//button[contains(text(),'Save')]"))).click();

Answer 2

Try JavaScript executors as below,

WebElement element = driver.findElement(By.xpath("//button[contains(text(),'Save')]"));
JavascriptExecutor js= (JavascriptExecutor) driver;
js.executeScript("arguments[0].click();", element); 

If this doesn’t work give a wait until the element is clickable then try above code again after wait

Answer 3

1. first check the xpath is correct?
2. second check if a button is enabled or disabled?
3. then click the button.

Sometimes, the button is not clickable and our script fails.

Answer 4

Use assertion that the button exists, loaded and clickable. And then try to find the button by it's text.

Something like that:

driver.findElement(By.text("Save")).click();

Answer 5

I came across this issue building a test suite for our own application which uses the Angular JS Framework.

Using the following helper functions:

private IWebElement FindElementWithWait(By id, int timeout)
   {
       bool found = false;
       int loop = 0;
       IWebElement element = null;
       var i = timeout * 10;
       while (!found && loop < i)
       {
           try
           {
               element = Driver.FindElement(id);
               found = true;
           }
           catch (Exception e)
           {
               found = false;
           }
           finally
           {
               loop++;

               Thread.Sleep(100);
           }
       }

       return element;
   }

private void JavascriptClick(IWebElement element)
   {
       Js.ExecuteScript("arguments[0].click();", element);
   }

It's possible to overcome the issue where elements using ng-click cause an "element not interactable" exception when calling the standard IWebElement .Click() method.

e.g. JavascriptClick(FindElementWithWait(By.XPath("//button[text()='My_ng-click_Button']"), 2));