findElement method showing an exception

Question

i'm need to click a button which may appear with a 50 percent chance, decided to use try/catch with findElementBy. Nevertheless try/catch doesn't work and I'm getting an exception. Maybe there is a more efficient way to handle that button?

driver.manage().timeouts().implicitlyWait(5000, TimeUnit.MILLISECONDS);
WebDriverWait wait = new WebDriverWait(driver,5);
try {
    WebElement element = driver.findElement(By.xpath("buttonXpath"));
    element.click();
}
catch (NoSuchElementException e){ }

Can you show the exception stacktrace? Please add also your imports, especially that one of the NoSuchElementException. — AndiCover, Dec 11 '19 at 11:58
What is the exception you are getting? `NoSuchElementException`? — Guy, Dec 11 '19 at 11:58

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered Dec 11 '19 at 12:33

0

Possibly you are seeing NoSuchElementException which can happen due to a lot of reasons. You can find a detailed discussion in NoSuchElementException, Selenium unable to locate element

Solution

The best approach would be to construct a Locator Strategy which uniquely identifies the desired element with in the HTML DOM following the discussions in:

Now as per best practices while invoking click() always induce induce WebDriverWait with in a try-catch{} block for the elementToBeClickable() as follows:

try{
    new WebDriverWait(driver, 20).until(ExpectedConditions.elementToBeClickable(By.xpath("buttonXpath"))).click();
    System.out.println("Element was clicked")
}
catch (TimeoutException e){ 
    System.out.println("Element wasn't clicked") 
}

answered Dec 11 '19 at 12:33

undetected Selenium

183,867
41
278
352

The OP never said the exception he is getting is `NoSuchElementException`. – Guy Dec 11 '19 at 12:35
@Guy Well, you can see OP trying to handle _NoSuchElementException_ in his code trials. – undetected Selenium Dec 11 '19 at 12:36
Yes, and he says he still have an exception despite the `try catch`. Unless he used the wrong import he has another exception. But you can't know which one is it without more details. – Guy Dec 11 '19 at 12:38
there is no `TimeoutException` what do you want to achieve? – Vault23 Dec 11 '19 at 13:00

score 0 · Answer 2 · edited Dec 11 '19 at 13:58

0

This will work for you:

List<Webelement> element = driver.findElements(By.xpath("buttonXpath"));

if(element.size() > 0) {
    element.get(0).click();
}

edited Dec 11 '19 at 13:58

Ömer Erden

7,680
5
36
45

answered Dec 11 '19 at 13:39

Sarthak Srivastava

9
1

score -2 · Accepted Answer · answered Dec 11 '19 at 12:00

-2

Use method to check if this element is on your screen:

if (!driver.findElementsByXPath("buttonXpath`enter code here`").isEmpty()) {
   driver.findElementByXPath("buttonXpath`enter code here`").click();
}

answered Dec 11 '19 at 12:00

Vault23

743
1
5
19

You are performing the Xpath query twice. Store the list of elements and access the first element of it, when it is not empty. – AndiCover Dec 11 '19 at 12:02
feel free to do whatever you want with this list. My example is just showing the way to avoid exception – Vault23 Dec 11 '19 at 12:05

findElement method showing an exception

3 Answers3

Solution