Issues with navigating pages in a headless browser

Other Questions Headless Browser
1

I’m having trouble with a headless browser for logging into our company’s online payroll system. The script works fine in regular mode but fails in headless mode. Here’s a simplified version of my code:

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

chrome_options = Options()
chrome_options.add_argument('--headless')
chrome_options.add_argument('--start-maximized')

driver = webdriver.Chrome(options=chrome_options)
print('Headless Chrome started')

driver.get('https://example-payroll-site.com')
print('Opened payroll website')

username = 'testuser'
password = 'testpass'
driver.find_element(By.ID, 'username_field').send_keys(username)
driver.find_element(By.ID, 'password_field').send_keys(password)
driver.find_element(By.ID, 'login_button').click()
print('Logged in')

try:
    WebDriverWait(driver, 10).until(EC.presence_of_element_located((By.CLASS_NAME, 'dashboard-icon')))
    driver.find_element(By.CLASS_NAME, 'dashboard-icon').click()
except Exception as e:
    print(f'Error: {e}')

The error I’m getting is:

Error: Message: element not interactable
(Session info: headless chrome=XX.X.XXXX.XXX)

Why is the element not interactable in headless mode when it works fine otherwise? Any ideas on how to fix this?

2

I encountered a similar issue with headless mode. One potential solution is to add a window size argument to your Chrome options, as elements might not be interactable if they’re not fully in view. Try this:

chrome_options.add_argument(‘–window-size=1920,1080’)

Also, consider whether the dashboard icon is inside an iframe. If it is, switch to the iframe using:

driver.switch_to.frame(driver.find_element(By.TAG_NAME, ‘iframe’))

Then continue with your WebDriverWait and click, remembering to switch back to the default content afterwards if necessary.

3

hey dave, i had similar issues. try adding a wait before clicking the dashboard icon. sometimes headless browsers load slower. also, check if there’s any overlay or popup blocking the icon. u could try:

WebDriverWait(driver, 20).until(EC.element_to_be_clickable((By.CLASS_NAME, 'dashboard-icon'))).click()

hope this helps!

4

I’ve dealt with similar headless browser issues before. One thing to consider is that some websites use JavaScript to dynamically load content, which can behave differently in headless mode. Try adding a longer wait time and use JavaScript to click the element:

WebDriverWait(driver, 30).until(EC.presence_of_element_located((By.CLASS_NAME, 'dashboard-icon')))
driver.execute_script("document.getElementsByClassName('dashboard-icon')[0].click();")

Also, check if the site is using any anti-bot measures. You might need to add additional headers or change the user agent to mimic a regular browser:

chrome_options.add_argument('user-agent=Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/90.0.4430.212 Safari/537.36')

These adjustments often help with headless mode quirks.