Action Class in Selenium

Action Class in Selenium

Action Class in Selenium is a built-in feature for handling keyboard and mouse events. It supports operations such as multiple clicks with the Control key, drag-and-drop, and many more. These operations are performed using the Advanced User Interactions API in Selenium WebDriver.

Handling Keyboard & Mouse Events

Handling special keyboard and mouse events is done using the Advanced User Interactions API. It contains the Actions and Action classes that are needed to execute these events. The most commonly used keyboard and mouse events provided by the Actions class are listed below.

In the following example, we use the moveToElement() method to hover over one of the Mercury Tours table rows.

The cell shown above is part of a <TR> element. When not hovered, its color is #FFC455 (orange). After hovering, the cell’s color becomes transparent and matches the background of the surrounding table.

Step 1) Import the Actions and Action classes.

Step 2) Instantiate a new Actions object.

Step 3) Instantiate an Action using the Actions object from Step 2.

Here we use the moveToElement() method to hover over the “Home” link. The build() method is always called last so that all listed actions are compiled into a single step.

Step 4) Use the perform() method to execute the Action object designed in Step 3.

Below is the full WebDriver code that checks the background color of the <TR> element before and after the mouse-over.

package newproject;

import org.openqa.selenium.*;
import org.openqa.selenium.firefox.FirefoxDriver;
import org.openqa.selenium.interactions.Action;
import org.openqa.selenium.interactions.Actions;

public class PG7 {

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        String baseUrl = "https://demo.guru99.com/test/newtours/";
        System.setProperty("webdriver.gecko.driver", "C:\\geckodriver.exe");
        WebDriver driver = new FirefoxDriver();

        driver.get(baseUrl);
        WebElement link_Home = driver.findElement(By.linkText("Home"));
        WebElement td_Home = driver.findElement(By.xpath(
            "//html/body/div/table/tbody/tr/td"
            + "/table/tbody/tr/td"
            + "/table/tbody/tr/td"
            + "/table/tbody/tr"));

        Actions builder = new Actions(driver);
        Action mouseOverHome = builder.moveToElement(link_Home).build();

        String bgColor = td_Home.getCssValue("background-color");
        System.out.println("Before hover: " + bgColor);
        mouseOverHome.perform();
        bgColor = td_Home.getCssValue("background-color");
        System.out.println("After hover: " + bgColor);
        driver.close();
    }
}

The output below shows that the background color became transparent after the mouse-over.

Building a Series of Multiple Actions

You can build a series of actions using the Action and Actions classes. Remember to close the series with the build() method. Consider the sample code below.

public static void main(String[] args) {
    String baseUrl = "https://www.facebook.com/";
    WebDriver driver = new FirefoxDriver();

    driver.get(baseUrl);
    WebElement txtUsername = driver.findElement(By.id("email"));

    Actions builder = new Actions(driver);
    Action seriesOfActions = builder
        .moveToElement(txtUsername)
        .click()
        .keyDown(txtUsername, Keys.SHIFT)
        .sendKeys(txtUsername, "hello")
        .keyUp(txtUsername, Keys.SHIFT)
        .doubleClick(txtUsername)
        .contextClick()
        .build();

    seriesOfActions.perform();
}

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