zombie.js - Can I make Behat/ZombieJS/Mink simulate a click on a "non-link" element, to fire JS listeners?

Question

I am using Behat for testing, with the ZombieJS driver, and everything is working very well so far, but there is one thing that bothers me, I can't seem to figure out how to get Behat to simulate a click on a non-link element. I guess this comes from Mink being a "cross-browser" driver, and it doesn't really make sense to click on non-link elements. For my use case though, I need it, because there are several elements on the page that have javascript event listeners attached to them, and I want to test these functionalities.

I tried using

Then I follow "div.sa"

But it fails with the expected error:

01. Link with id|title|alt|text "div.sa" not found.

Since it's not a link element. There is a similar step in Behat:

I press "button.class"

But this one is only for buttons.

Is there a way I could get Behat click on elements that are not tags?

Answer 1

With some error handling:

/** Click on the element with the provided xpath query
 *
 * @When /^(?:|I )click on the element "([^"]*)"$/
 */
public function iClickOnTheElement($locator)
{
    $session = $this->getSession(); // get the mink session
    $element = $session->getPage()->find('css', $locator); // runs the actual query and returns the element

    // errors must not pass silently
    if (null === $element) {
        throw new InvalidArgumentException(sprintf('Could not evaluate CSS selector: "%s"', $locator));
    }

    // ok, let's click on it
    $element->click();
}