WebDriver open new tab

Question

I have trawled the web and the WebDriver API. I don't see a way to open new tabs using WebDriver/Selenium2.0 .

Can someone please confirm if I am right?

Thanks, Chris. P.S: The current alternative I see is to either load different urls in the same window or open new windows.

Solution 1

There is totally a cross-browser way to do this using webdriver, those who say you can not are just too lazy. First, you need to use WebDriver to inject and anchor tag into the page that opens the tab you want. Here's how I do it (note: driver is a WebDriver instance):

/**
 * Executes a script on an element
 * @note Really should only be used when the web driver is sucking at exposing
 * functionality natively
 * @param script The script to execute
 * @param element The target of the script, referenced as arguments[0]
 */
public void trigger(String script, WebElement element) {
    ((JavascriptExecutor)driver).executeScript(script, element);
}

/** Executes a script
 * @note Really should only be used when the web driver is sucking at exposing
 * functionality natively
 * @param script The script to execute
 */
public Object trigger(String script) {
    return ((JavascriptExecutor)driver).executeScript(script);
}

/**
 * Opens a new tab for the given URL
 * @param url The URL to 
 * @throws JavaScriptException If unable to open tab
 */
public void openTab(String url) {
    String script = "var d=document,a=d.createElement('a');a.target='_blank';a.href='%s';a.innerHTML='.';d.body.appendChild(a);return a";
    Object element = trigger(String.format(script, url));
    if (element instanceof WebElement) {
        WebElement anchor = (WebElement) element; anchor.click();
        trigger("var a=arguments[0];a.parentNode.removeChild(a);", anchor);
    } else {
        throw new JavaScriptException(element, "Unable to open tab", 1);
    }       
}

Next, you need to tell webdriver to switch its current window handle to the new tab. Here's how I do that:

/**
 * Switches to the non-current window
 */
public void switchWindow() throws NoSuchWindowException, NoSuchWindowException {
    Set<String> handles = driver.getWindowHandles();
    String current = driver.getWindowHandle();
    handles.remove(current);
    String newTab = handles.iterator().next();
    locator.window(newTab);
}

After this is done, you may then interact with elements in the new page context using the same WebDriver instance. Once you are done with that tab, you can always return back to the default window context by using a similar mechanism to the switchWindow function above. I'll leave that as an exercise for you to figure out.

Solution 2

The Selenium WebDriver API does not support managing tabs within the browser at present.

Solution 3

        var windowHandles = webDriver.WindowHandles;
        var script = string.Format("window.open('{0}', '_blank');", url);
        scriptExecutor.ExecuteScript(script);
        var newWindowHandles = webDriver.WindowHandles;
        var openedWindowHandle = newWindowHandles.Except(windowHandles).Single();
        webDriver.SwitchTo().Window(openedWindowHandle);

Solution 4

I had the same issue and found an answer. Give a try.

Robot r = new Robot(); 
r.keyPress(KeyEvent.VK_CONTROL); 
r.keyPress(KeyEvent.VK_T); 
r.keyRelease(KeyEvent.VK_CONTROL); 
r.keyRelease(KeyEvent.VK_T);

It will open a new tab you can perform your actions in the new tab.

Solution 5

Do this

_webDriver.SwitchTo().Window(_webDriver.WindowHandles.Where(x => x != _webDriver.CurrentWindowHandle).First());

or Last() etc.

PS there is no guarantee that the WindowHandles are in the order displayed on your browser, therefore, I would advise you keep some history of current windows before you do the command to that caused a new tab to open. Then you can compare your stored window handles with the current set and switch to the new one in the list, of which, there should only be one.

View more solutions

Comments

[JimEvans]

I've added the correct answer to your specific question, but given your statement about "alternatives", I suspect there's more to your question. If you'd like to provide more context, a more complete answer could be given.

[ChrisOdney]

Thanks Jim, I wanted to be sure that there is no way of handling tabs. By "Alternatives" I only mean how else could I handle tabbed browsing, there are no special cases involved, so opening multiple windows seems fine to me.

[jamesfzhang]

what is the locator in the last line of switchWindow()?

[djangofan]

In regular non-remote version of Webdriver, I believe a locator could be just driver.switchTo() right?

[JimEvans]

I agree that the code provided here will open a new tab in any given browser window through WebDriver. However, there's no guarantee that a particular driver will be able to control the resulting new tab.

[JimEvans]

Downvoters: This is the answer you're going to get from the project itself. Just because it's not an answer you like, doesn't mean it's wrong or of poor quality.

[sumit_batcoder]

Nice workaround...just i'm unable to catch the new tab created. I'm using C#.net Any help is appreciated

[AutomatedTester]

@Jonathan Azoff How do you control the tab that is opened then? Opening a tab is doable but will cause you endless grief if the driver can't handle tabs

[djangofan]

Interesting idea. Will that work going through a Selenium Grid pipe?

[andriy]

@JimEvans, this answer is of poor quality because it doesn't answer the question. Answers below that show workarounds are more useful. An answer that says "Here's a kludgy way to do that" will always be more useful than an answer that says "You can't do that."

[JimEvans]

@Kyralessa Respectfully, I disagree. The legitimate answer sometimes is, "You can't do that." And that's true in this case. The API doesn't, and won't support it. Any of the so-called workarounds in other answers may give you a new tab opened, but there's no guarantee that WebDriver will be able to open the new tab. In fact, I'm quite sure that at least one browser won't. Rather than give false hope that any solution will work cross-browser (one of the main promises of WebDriver), it's far better to be clear about the limitations.

[andriy]

@JimEvans, I'm not saying your answer isn't correct. The trouble is that it isn't helpful. "There's no way to do that" doesn't help anyone solve his/her problem. And in fact there are workarounds to do it; I was able to do it with a ChromeDriver just by simulating a control-click on a link. Selenium recognizes the tabs as separate windows. Editing your answer to include workarounds of this sort would make it helpful, and not merely "correct".

[JimEvans]

@Kyralessa You were able to get it to work in Chrome. Great. Tell me, does it also work in IE or Safari? Oh, and remember that just because it works in Chrome today, since it's explicitly unsupported by the API, there is absolutely no guarantee it will continue to work in future versions. Glad you were able to make it work in some case, though.

[andriy]

@JimEvans, let me try to explain this again. Not everyone is doing cross-browser work. One example is internal web applications, where it makes more sense to specify a standard browser than to do the work to support multiple browsers. So a good answer would say, "It's not officially supported; but there are some non-cross-browser ways to do it, such as this and this, in case that helps in your specific situation."

[JimEvans]

There is no need to reiterate what you've already stated. I completely understand. I simply don't agree with you. Since you seem determined to attempt to convince people that an answer provided by the project itself is wrong or less useful than an answer that cannot be guaranteed to work by the authors of the project, and also are determined to have the last word on the subject, I'll simply let this be my last comment on the matter.

[maxenglander]

Tried for hours to open a new tab by sending keys CONTROL 't', this is the only solution that worked for me. +1

[janderson]

This solved my problem opening tabs on chromedriver.

[JabberwockyDecompiler]

This SO post helped with this answer for C#. To get the JavaScriptExectutor create a method like public static IJavaScriptExecutor Scripts(this IWebDriver driver) { return (IJavaScriptExecutor)driver; }