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Reliable click function in capybara with selenium

Sometimes the .click capybara function doesn't fire and it doesn't fail either because it assumes that it fired. So I looked around and found that .trigger("click") is more reliable with some drawbacks too.
But I read the github for the trigger() function and it says it doesn't work in selenium.
Is there an alternative function for a reliable click with capybara/ruby in selenium?
ex:
find(el).click
vs
find(el).trigger("click")

No, there is no alternative click function in Capybara with selenium (other than potentially executing JS via execute_script). It's not likely the click isn't firing, it's more likely that it is firing at the "wrong" location due to animation on the page causing the calculated location of the click to be out of date by the time the click actually occurs. In that case disabling animation during testing can often help. If it isn't a wrong location issue, and you can create an example that exhibits the behavior, report it to either geckodriver or chromedriver and they will usually fix it pretty quickly (as long as you provide an example that replicates it).

Sometimes, the element you are trying to click is hidden or overlapped, in those cases you have to use-
find(el).trigger("click", visible: false)
Hope that helps.

Not able to fire click event programatically(through javascript) in IE browser(in Chrome it works fine)

I have used following things also:
var event = document.createEvent("MouseEvent");
event.initMouseEvent("click",true,true,window,0,0,0,0,0,false,false,false,false,0,null);
button.dispatchEvent(btnEvent);
In short i want to fire click event through javascript(dont want to use handler,just click event only).
Please help me out of this issue, thnx in advance.

If you're using JQuery, you may be able to use trigger. See docs here: http://www.w3schools.com/jquery/event_trigger.asp.
Otherwise, here's a native JavaScript implementation: http://youmightnotneedjquery.com/#trigger_custom

this can be achieved with jquery trigger with less pain
$(button).trigger('click')

Finding bounded events in inspector

I've been wondering a long time about this. Is there a way in eg Chrome to see what events are bound to an element? Since many people now use jQuery with a syntax like the following:
$("a.subtle").click(function(){
//do something
});
Is there a way in the inspector to easily find this code? I know in the inspector you can go to the "event listeners"-tab to see what events are bound. Looking at an example I can see there is a click-event on the element with the js file of jQuery next to it, so this must somehow point to it, but of course it is obscured by all the jQuery code. Here's what I'm looking at:
So the question is, is there a quick way to find the jQuery code applied to an element? To be clear, I want to quickly find the code I posted up top.
I could search through the source code for a .click() on that class, but of course it could be done via its parent, or with .on(), or on so many bazillion ways..

Check out the Visual Event bookmarklet.
Here's a quote from their website:
Visual Event is an open source Javascript bookmarklet which provides debugging information about events that have been attached to DOM elements.
Visual Event shows:
Which elements have events attached to them.
The type of events attached to an element.
The code that will be run with [sic] the event is triggered.
The source file and line number for where the attached function was defined (Webkit browsers and Opera only).

how to see what javascript code is currently executing?

with firebug i only knows how to see what ajax-files are called.
i have a jquery mouse click event handler bounded to a link element.
is it possible to see what javascript code is used when clicking on an element in case you forgot if you got an event handler or other javascript code coupled to it?

You can use the profiler in Firebug. Go to the Console tab, and click Profile above the message area, next to Clear. It will say that the profiler is running. Click the Profile button again, and you'll see a report on what functions were called and how much time was spent in each one.
If you're using a library like jQuery, the output may be little less clear since it will show much of the time was spent in functions from the library (i.e. F(), init(), dimension(), etc). It will show which file each function was defined in though, so you can disregard the ones that are in the library (unless that's what you're looking for).
If you're using anonymous functions, you can give them names so they show up in the profiler - see this article for a thorough (possibly too thorough) explanation.

Use breakpoints ..
reference: http://getfirebug.com/javascript

You should take a look at Eventbug (it requires Firefox 3.6, some of the docs are old):
Downloads:
http://getfirebug.com/releases/eventbug/1.5/
Some background:
http://www.softwareishard.com/blog/firebug/eventbug-alpha-released/

Just add 'debugger;' at your onclickevent, and happy debug it.
*Important: you gotta open the firebug panel and Reload the page

How to trace JavaScript events like onclick onblur?

Is there a way to debug or trace every JavaScript event in Internet Explorer 7?
I have a bug that prevents scrolling after text-selecting, and I have no idea which event or action creates the bug. I really want to see which events are being triggered when I move the mouse for example.
It's too much work to rewire the source and I kind of hoped there was something like a sniffer which shows me all the events that are triggered.

Loop through all elements on the page which have an onXYZ function defined and then add the trace to them:
var allElements = document.all; // Is this right? Anyway, you get the idea.
for (var i in allElements) {
if (typeof allElements[i].onblur == "function") {
var oldFunc = allElements[i].onblur;
allElements[i].onblur = function() {
alert("onblur called");
oldFunc();
};
}
}

You might want to try Visual Studio 2008 and its feature to debug JavaScript code.
If the problem is not specific to Internet Explorer 7 but also occurs in Firefox, then another good way to debug JavaScript code is Firefox and the Firebug add-on which has a JavaScript debugger. Then you can also put console.log statements in the JavaScript code which you can then see the output of in the Console Window in Firebug, instead of using alerts which sometimes mess up the event chain.

#[nickf] - I'm pretty sure document.all is an Internet Explorer specific extension.
You need to attach an event handler, there's no way to just 'watch' the events. A framework like jQuery of the Microsoft Ajax library will easily give you methods to add the event handlers. jQuery is nice because of its selector framework.
Then I use Firebug (Firefox extension) and put in a breakpoint. I find Firebug is a lot easier to set up and tear down than Visual Studio 2008.

Borkdude said:
You might want to try Visual Studio 2008 and its feature to debug JavaScript code.
I've been hacking around event handling multiple times, and in my opinion, although classical stepping debuggers are useful to track long code runs, they're not good in tracking events. Imagine listening to mouse move events and breaking into another application on each event... So in this case, I'd strongly advise logging.
If the problem is not specific to Internet Explorer 7 but also occurs in Firefox, then another good way to debug JavaScript code is Firefox and the Firebug add-on which has a JavaScript debugger.
And there's also Firebug Lite for Internet Explorer. I didn't have a chance to use it, but it exists. :-) The downside of it is that it doesn't a fully-fledged debugger, but it has a window.console object, which is exactly what you need.

It's basic, but you could stick alerts or document.write calls in when you trigger something.

The obvious way would be to set up some alerts for various events something like:
element.onclick = function () { alert('Click event'); }
Otherwise you have a less intrusive option of inserting your alerts into the dom somewhere.
But, seriously consider using a library like jQuery to implement your functionality. Lots of the cross-browser issues are solved problems and you don't need to solve them again. I am not sure exactly of the functionality you are trying to achieve but there are most probably plenty of scrolling and selecting plugins for jQuery you could use.

I am not sure on the exact code (it has been a while since I wrote complex JavaScript code), but you could enumerate through all of the controls on the form and attach an event that outputs something when the event is triggered.
You could even use anonymous functions to wrap the necessary information for identifying which event was triggering.

One thing I like to do is create a bind function in JavaScript (like what you can find in the Prototype library) specifically for events, so that it passes the "event" object along to the bound function. Now, if you were to do this, you could simply throw in a trace call that will be invoked for every handler that uses it. And then remove it when it's not needed. One place. Easy.
However, regardless of how you get the trace statement to be called, you still want to see it. The best strategy is to have a separate pane or window handing the trace calls. Dojo Toolkit has a built-in console that runs in Internet Explorer, and there are other similar things out there. The classic way of doing it is to create a new window and document.write to it.
I recommend attaching a date-time to each trace. Helped me considerably in the past.
Debugging and alerts usually won't help you, because it interrupts the normal event flow.

Matt Berseth has something that may be the kind of thing you're looking for in Debugging ASP.NET AJAX Applications with the Trace Console AjaxControlToolkit Control.
It's based on the Yahoo YUI logger, YUI 2: Logger.

My suggestion is, use FireFox together with FireBug and use the built-in Debug/Trace objects. They are a charm.