C# Selenium - Is there any way to check if the Element Exists or not without throwing NoSuchElementException

Question

Is there any way to check if the element exists on the page without throwing an exception using selenium C#.

Answer 1

Your alternative might be to use .FindElements. Given a selector that doesn't match anything it'll return an empty list as opposed to throw an exception.

var elementExists = driver.FindElements(By.ClassName("something")).Any();

Any is a LINQ method that merely checks if the list contains something (think .Count == 0).

Answer 2

I would use try catch block with explicit wait

public bool CheckElementExist(string state)
{
    //Write the selector carefully.
    By byCss = By.CssSelector("#view-" + state + "");
    try
    {
     //Explicit wait to check if element exist for 10s   
     new WebDriverWait(Driver, TimeSpan.FromSeconds(10)).Until(ExpectedConditions.ElementExists(byCss));
        return true;
    }
    catch (NoSuchElementException)
    {
        return false;
    }
}

Answer 3

http://docs.seleniumhq.org/docs/04_webdriver_advanced.jsp

There is something called an explicit and implicit wait take a look at the above link.