I am using chromedp to open a new tab (context) for a given link and most of the time, it works fine.
But, what I am trying to understand is why it sometimes does not. By does not, I mean that I have log messages before and after clicking the link and as far as I can tell, chromedp executes the click without error or delay:
2025/05/02 07:30:00 -0400 INF clicking: //*[@id=“home-screen”]/div[2]/section[5]/div[5]/div/ul/li[2]/a[1]
2025/05/02 07:30:00 -0400 INF clicked
2025/05/02 07:38:25 -0400 INF new instance
targetElementXpath := fmt.Sprintf("//*[@id=\"home-screen\"]/div[2]/section[5]/div[5]/div/ul/li[%d]/a[1]", i.Index)
targetIDChannel := chromedp.WaitNewTarget(i.session.ctx, matchTabWithNonEmptyURL)
timeLimitedCtx, timeLimitedCancel := context.WithTimeout(i.session.ctx, 5*time.Second)
defer timeLimitedCancel()
log.Info().Msgf("clicking: %s", targetElementXpath)
err := chromedp.Run(timeLimitedCtx, chromedp.Click(targetElementXpath))
if err != nil {
return err
}
log.Info().Msg("clicked")
newInstance, newCancelFunc := chromedp.NewContext(i.session.ctx, chromedp.WithTargetID(<-targetIDChannel))
i.ctx = newInstance
i.cancel = newCancelFunc
log.Info().Msg("new instance")
return nil
This is a snippet of the code that is producing the message above. From the logs, we can discern that it took 8 minutes and 25 seconds to return. That time is when I manually clicked the link thereby launching the new tab.
- how would chromedp click an element immediately, yet no tab was actually launched? As I am using the remote developer option, I can see the page and even though chrome is much faster than my eyes, the elements were there for me to see. I have had errors if the element didn’t exist.
- separately, I need to refactor the blocking code for how long I want to wait to receive the new session. Perhaps that will alleviate problem #1 because if for some reason chromedp did not actually trigger the click, then trying again might get it working.