Perform Drag and Drop Operation in Selenium with Python

We can perform drag and drop actions in Selenium with the help of Action Chains class. These classes are generally used for automating interactions like context menu click, mouse button actions, key press and mouse movements.

These types of actions are mainly common in complex scenarios like drag and drop and hovering over an element on the page. The methods of the Action Chains class are utilized by advanced scripts. We can manipulate DOM with the help of Action Chains in Selenium.

The action chain object implements the ActionChains in the form of a queue and then executes the perform() method. On calling the method perform(), all the actions on action chains will be performed.

The method of creating an Action Chain object is listed below −

• First we need to import the Action Chain class and then the driver will be passed as an argument to it.

• Now all the operations of action chains can be done with the help of this object.

Syntax

Syntax for creating an object of Action Chains −

from selenium import webdriver

# import Action chains
from selenium.webdriver import ActionChains
# create webdriver object
driver = webdriver.Firefox()
# create action chain object
action = ActionChains(driver)

After creating an object of Action Chains, we can perform numerous operations one by one like a chain which is queued.

drag_and_drop() - This method performs the action of holding the left mouse button on the source element. Then moves to the target element and finally releases the mouse button.

Syntax

drag_and_drop(args1, args2)

Where, args1 is the element on which mouse down operation is done.

And args2 is the element on which mouse up operation is done.

#source
source = driver.find_element_by_link_text("Tutorialspoint")
#target
target = driver.find_element_by_link_text("Selenium")
#action chain object
action = ActionChains(driver)
# drag and drop operation
action.drag_and_drop(source, target)

Example

Code Implementation for drag and drop operation.

from selenium import webdriver
from selenium.webdriver import ActionChains
from selenium.webdriver.common.keys import Keys
#browser exposes an executable file
#Through Selenium test we will invoke the executable file which will then
#invoke actual browser
driver = webdriver.Chrome(executable_path="C:\chromedriver.exe")
# to maximize the browser window
driver.maximize_window()
#get method to launch the URL
driver.get("https://jqueryui.com/droppable/")
#to refresh the browser
driver.refresh()
# identifying the source and target elements
source= driver.find_element_by_id("draggable");
target= driver.find_element_by_id("droppable");
# action chain object creation
action = ActionChains(driver)
# drag and drop operation and the perform
action.drag_and_drop(source, target).perform()
driver.close()