Selenium _target = blank switch to new window how to?

When we click on a link which open a new window, getting focus at currently opened windows is not straightforward in selenium. The main issue with it is that the new window may or may not have a WINDOWNAME that can be used by the webdriver function switch_to_window(WINDOWNAME).

 If the new window has been opened by a code snippet such as,

<a href="http://www.qanepal.com/" target="_blank">Subscribe</a>

then the name is randomly assigned, and you’ll need to use code as shown below to find it’s name.

current_windows = self.driver.window_handles

# This is the code which open new windows.
self.driver.find_element_by_link_text("Subscribe").click()

new_windows = self.driver.window_handles
new_window = list(set(new_windows) - set(current_windows))[0]
self.driver.switch_to_window(new_window)

If you can modify the source html or influence the developers to do so, it would be nice to have a proper name assigned to the new window. This can be done by using a named target; eg:

<a href="http://some-link/" target="mytarget">some link</a>

Now, when the new window is opened, you can use it’s name explicitly in code, such as

driver.switch_to_window('mytarget')