Mouse Hover Action in Selenium

  

In Selenium WebDriver (Java), mouse hover action is used to simulate moving the mouse pointer over a web element (like a menu, button, or tooltip). It is commonly used to interact with drop-down menus or elements that appear on hover.

How to Perform Mouse Hover:

Selenium provides the Actions class to handle complex user gestures like mouse hover.

Syntax:

Actions actions = new Actions(driver);
actions.moveToElement(element).perform();

Example Code: Mouse Hover in Selenium Java

Let's say you want to hover over a menu and then click a submenu item.

Sample HTML structure:

<ul id="menu">
    <li class="dropdown">
        <a href="#">Products</a>
        <ul class="submenu">
            <li><a href="/products/software">Software</a></li>
        </ul>
    </li>
</ul>

Selenium Java Script:

import org.openqa.selenium.By;
import org.openqa.selenium.WebDriver;
import org.openqa.selenium.WebElement;
import org.openqa.selenium.chrome.ChromeDriver;
import org.openqa.selenium.interactions.Actions;

public class MouseHoverExample {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        // Set the path to your ChromeDriver
        System.setProperty("webdriver.chrome.driver", "path/to/chromedriver");

        // Initialize WebDriver
        WebDriver driver = new ChromeDriver();
        driver.manage().window().maximize();

        // Navigate to target website
        driver.get("https://example.com");

        // Locate the main menu element
        WebElement menu = driver.findElement(By.xpath("//a[text()='Products']"));

        // Initialize Actions class
        Actions actions = new Actions(driver);

        // Perform mouse hover
        actions.moveToElement(menu).perform();

        // Locate and click the submenu item after hover
        WebElement subMenu = driver.findElement(By.xpath("//a[text()='Software']"));
        subMenu.click();

        // Optional: close the browser
        driver.quit();
    }
}

Important Points:

• Always use .perform() at the end of the action.

• Ensure elements are visible and interactable before hovering.

• You may need to add explicit waits if submenu appears with delay.