I’ve been trying to find a good solution for browser automation that can handle JavaScript popups. I tested a couple of Docker images with headless browsers but ran into some issues.
The main problem is that these browsers don’t seem to recognize popups created with window.open(). When I check driver.window_handles, it always shows just one element.
I’m using Python with Selenium WebDriver for my automation tasks. Has anyone found a reliable way to work with popups in this kind of setup? I’m open to trying non-Docker solutions too if that might help.
Any tips or recommendations would be really helpful. I’m kind of stuck and not sure what to try next. Thanks!
I’ve wrestled with similar popup issues in my automation projects. One approach that’s worked well for me is using Selenium’s ActionChains. It lets you simulate more complex user interactions, which can sometimes trigger popups that simple clicks miss.
For example, you could try something like:
from selenium.webdriver.common.action_chains import ActionChains
element = driver.find_element_by_id('some-element')
actions = ActionChains(driver)
actions.move_to_element(element).click().perform()
This mimics a user moving the mouse and clicking, which might trigger popups more reliably.
Another trick I’ve found useful is adding small waits between actions. Sometimes the popup doesn’t appear instantly, so a short time.sleep() after clicking can help:
element.click()
time.sleep(0.5)
handles = driver.window_handles
If you’re still having trouble, you might want to look into using a tool like Puppeteer instead of Selenium. It has better support for modern web technologies and can sometimes handle tricky popups more easily. Hope this helps!
have u tried using pyautogui? it’s pretty handy for dealing with popups that selenium struggles with. you can use it to simulate mouse clicks and keyboard inputs, which might help trigger those tricky popups. just pip install pyautogui and give it a shot. good luck!
Have you considered using Playwright? It’s a newer automation framework that’s built to handle modern web apps, including tricky JavaScript popups. I switched from Selenium to Playwright for a project last year and found it much more reliable for popup handling.
Playwright has built-in support for multiple browser contexts and pages, which makes dealing with new windows and popups pretty straightforward. It also has a cool feature called ‘auto-waiting’ that automatically waits for elements to be ready before interacting with them.
Here’s a quick Python example of how you might handle a popup with Playwright:
from playwright.sync_api import sync_playwright
with sync_playwright() as p:
browser = p.chromium.launch()
page = browser.new_page()
page.goto('your_url')
with page.expect_popup() as popup_info:
page.click('#popup-trigger')
popup = popup_info.value
# Now you can interact with the popup
popup.fill('#popup-input', 'Some text')
popup.click('#popup-submit')
browser.close()
Might be worth giving it a try if you’re open to exploring alternatives to Selenium.