Can not click on a Element: ElementClickInterceptedException in Splinter / Selenium

I'm trying to scrape a page, but I sometimes have trouble clicking a link/button.

When the web page loads, then the "loadingWhiteBox" will appear first and then disappear after a few seconds (but it will remain in the HTML code) as long as the box is appears on the website, I can not click on the link and get following error message:

selenium.common.exceptions.ElementClickInterceptedException: Message: 
Element <span class="taLnk ulBlueLinks"> is not clickable at point 
(318.3000030517578,661.7999877929688) because another element <div 
class="loadingWhiteBox"> obscures it

Is there any way to work around this? I've already tried working with the following command:

driver.is_element_present_by_css('div[class*="loadingWhiteBox"]')

But the element is present even when it's not active.

You can try the below 2 methods to click on element.

element = driver.find_element_by_css('div[class*="loadingWhiteBox"]')
driver.execute_script("arguments[0].click();", element)

element = driver.find_element_by_css('div[class*="loadingWhiteBox"]')
webdriver.ActionChains(driver).move_to_element(element ).click(element ).perform()

hope this will work.

This error message...

selenium.common.exceptions.ElementClickInterceptedException: Message: Element <span class="taLnk ulBlueLinks"> is not clickable at point (318.3000030517578,661.7999877929688) because another element <div class="loadingWhiteBox"> obscures it

...implies that the desired element wasn't clickable as some other element obscures it.

There are multiple approaches to address this issue and a couple of them are as follows:

• As you intent to invoke click() you need to induce WebDriverWait inconjunction with the WebDriverWaitWebDriverWait for the element_to_be_clickable() and you can use either of the following Locator Strategies:

  • Using CSS_SELECTOR:

    WebDriverWait(driver, 20).until(EC.element_to_be_clickable((By.CSS_SELECTOR, "span.taLnk.ulBlueLinks"))).click()
    

  • Using XPATH:

    WebDriverWait(driver, 20).until(EC.element_to_be_clickable((By.XPATH, "//span[@class='taLnk ulBlueLinks']"))).click()
    	
    

• Incase the error ...another element

  obscures it... still persists first you need to induce WebDriverWait inconjunction with the expected_conditions for the invisibility_of_element() of the blocking element as follows:

  • Using CSS_SELECTOR:

    WebDriverWait(driver, 20).until(EC.invisibility_of_element((By.CSS_SELECTOR, "div.loadingWhiteBox")))
    WebDriverWait(driver, 20).until(EC.element_to_be_clickable((By.CSS_SELECTOR, "span.taLnk.ulBlueLinks"))).click()
    

  • Using XPATH:

    WebDriverWait(driver, 20).until(EC.invisibility_of_element((By.XPATH, "//div[@class='loadingWhiteBox']")))
    WebDriverWait(driver, 20).until(EC.element_to_be_clickable((By.XPATH, "//span[@class='taLnk ulBlueLinks']"))).click()
    	
    

• If the issue still persists you can use the execute_script() method as follows:

  • Using CSS_SELECTOR:

    WebDriverWait(driver, 20).until(EC.invisibility_of_element((By.CSS_SELECTOR, "div.loadingWhiteBox")))
    driver.execute_script("arguments[0].click();", WebDriverWait(driver, 20).until(EC.element_to_be_clickable((By.CSS_SELECTOR, "span.taLnk.ulBlueLinks"))))
    

  • Using XPATH:

    WebDriverWait(driver, 20).until(EC.invisibility_of_element((By.XPATH, "//div[@class='loadingWhiteBox']")))
    driver.execute_script("arguments[0].click();", WebDriverWait(driver, 20).until(EC.element_to_be_clickable((By.XPATH, "//span[@class='taLnk ulBlueLinks']"))))
    

Note

You have to add the following imports :

from selenium.webdriver.support.ui import WebDriverWait 	  
from selenium.webdriver.common.by import By 	  
from selenium.webdriver.support import expected_conditions as EC

You can wait until the element

WebDriverWait wait = new WebDriverWait(driver, 30);
wait.until(ExpectedConditions.invisibilityOfElementLocated(By.className("loadingWhiteBox")));

for Selenide

WebElement element = selenide_element.toWebElement();
WebDriverRunner.driver().executeJavaScript("arguments[0].click();", element);

When I get this error I usually try a different approach. Instead of:

driver.findElement(By.cssSelector("div[class*="loadingWhiteBox"]")).click();

Try this:

WebElement webElement = driver.findElement(By.cssSelector("div[class*="loadingWhiteBox"]"));
((JavascriptExecutor) driver).executeScript("arguments[0].click();", webElement);

This will click the found webElement even when there are overlays.

If this is not working then be sure that you are trying to click the correct 'clickable' web element and check that your css selector is not pointing to a different webElement. By 'clickable' I mean a webElement that performs an action when you click it (for example opening a new page). The web driver will click it and you may think it didn't actually performed the click action, but it actually performed it on the wrong webElement.

I faced the same problem and I just used this : elm = driver.find_elements_by_css_selector('div[class*="loadingWhiteBox"]') elm.click()