Watir and Cucumber. link not clickable - html

Question

I am new to Watir and Cucumber, and I am trying to run an automation to create Live IDs. Below is the HTML for the link that I want to click, the "New" text is what it is showing on webpage. It would lead me to the form to add new contact to my Live account.
<ul class="c_cc" role="presentation" styple="overflow:visible;">
<li class="c_sm c_mcp" id = "new">
<a id href="#" class="c_nobdr t_prs">
<span class="is_c" dir="ltr" style="padding-right: 5px;">
<img class="is_img" src="https://p.pfx.ms/is/invis.gif" onload="this.onload=null;$Do.when('$IS.Init',0,this);" style="width:26px;height:26px;background-position:-1px -1px;background-image:url('https://p.pfx.ms/h/command4.png');" alt="New contact" title />
</span>
"New"
</a>
<span class="c_ms"></span>
</li>
</ul>
the watir code I wrote to click the "New" is below:
#browser.div(:id, "c_header").div(:id, "c_cb0").ul(:class, "c_cc").span(:text, "is_c").when_present.click
I get this error:
Watir::Wait::TimeoutError: timed out after 30 seconds, waiting for {:id=>"is_c", :tag_name=>"span"} to become present
Then I tried below code:
#browser.div(:id, "c_header").div(:id, "c_cb0").ul(:class, "c_cc").span(:text, "New").when_present.click
but this code does not really clicking on the "New" link, so the next form won't show up, and the rest of the code cannot run. Does anyone know any solution to this problem?
I found out a new window popped up, so it could not find the element in the old window. Thanks guys for helping.

Answer 1

In the first watir code snippet, a :text locator is being used for the .span method instead of a :class locator. For example:
browser.ul(:class, "c_cc").span(:text, "is_c").exists? #=> false
browser.ul(:class, "c_cc").span(:class, "is_c").exists? #=> true
In the second watir code snippet, a :text locator with a value of "New" is being used for the .span method. In this case, a .link method should be used. Additionally, the string includes double-quotes, so the double-quotes must be escaped if enclosed in another set of double-quotes (or enclose in single-quotes). For example:
browser.ul(:class, "c_cc").span(:text, "New").exists? #=> false
browser.ul(:class, "c_cc").span(:text, "\"New\"").exists? #=> false
browser.ul(:class, "c_cc").link(:text, "\"New\"").exists? #=> true
browser.ul(:class, "c_cc").link(:text, '"New"').exists? #=> true
So, one of the following examples should work:
browser.link(:text, "\"New\"").when_present.click
browser.link(:text, '"New"').when_present.click
browser.link(:class, "c_nobdr t_prs").when_present.click

Answer 2

Wow. This is old and I have encountered the same behavior. First, this is in a Cucumber step definition. The following works perfectly in open Ruby code. It simply refuses to function as a step.
It finds the link in the table and clicks it. Click doesn't function.
link = browser.table(class: 'alert-table').tbody.rows[1].cells.last.link(text: 'View')
# <Watir::Anchor: located: false; {:class=>"alert-table", :tag_name=>"table"} --> {:tag_name=>"tbody"} --> {:index=>1} --> {:index=>-1} --> {:text=>"View", :tag_name=>"a"}>
link.click
Ruby 2.4
watir (6.16.5)
regexp_parser (~> 1.2)
selenium-webdriver (~> 3.6)