Selenium/Java: clicking jQueryUI datepicker next arrow

Question

I try to click to the arrow, nothing happens. I have this:

driver.findElement(By.xpath("//input[@class='ui-datepicker-inline']")).click();

or

driver.findElement(By.cssSelector("a[contains(@class, 'ui-datepicker')]")).click();

<div class="ui-datepicker-inline ui-datepicker ui-widget ui-widget-content ui-helper-clearfix ui-corner-all tsDatePicker tsDatePickerFirstCalendar" style="display: block;"> 

I want to click to the arrow so that Mars 2025 appears

Answer 1

Looks like on the mentioned website jQueryUI datepicker is used. To click the arrow we should find how it is identified. To do it we can inspect it using DevTools:

It has next class: .ui-datepicker-next.ui-corner-all. So we can use it to click the arrow and the next mounth will appear - March in our case.

Attaching the whole code snippet:

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

    public class SimpleSeleniumExample {

        public static void main(String[] args) {
            // Point to your ChromeDriver executable
            System.setProperty("webdriver.chrome.driver", "/usr/local/bin/chromedriver");

            // Initialize ChromeDriver
            WebDriver driver = new ChromeDriver();

            try {
                driver.get("https://jqueryui.com/datepicker/#inline");

                takeALittleNap(); //😴

                driver.switchTo()
                    .frame(driver.findElement(By.cssSelector("iframe.demo-frame")));

                //click to the arrow
                WebElement nextButton = driver.findElement(By.cssSelector(".ui-datepicker-next.ui-corner-all"));
            nextButton.click();

                takeALittleNap(); //😴

                String newMonth = driver.findElement(By.cssSelector(".ui-datepicker-month")).getText();
                System.out.println("New month: " + newMonth); //should be March

                takeALittleNap(); //😴
            } catch (Exception e) {
                e.printStackTrace();
            } finally {
                // Close the browser
                driver.quit();
            }
        }

        private static void takeALittleNap() throws InterruptedException {
            Thread.sleep(2000);
        }
}