Using webdriver to see if an element exists WITHOUT throwing an exception?

Question

I am new to Selenium webdriver, maybe this question is obvious. I am after situation like this:

If the element exists, click it and go back to index page:

driver.findElement(By.id("...."])).click();

if doesn't exit, skip it and go back to index page. The test still goes on without any exception thrown.

I know one solution to this:

driver.findElements( By.id("...") ).size() != 0

so i tried:

if(driver.findElements(By.id("....")).size() > 0)
    {
        driver.findElement(By.id("....")).click();
        driver.findElement(By.cssSelector("...")).click();
    } 
else
    {
        driver.findElement(By.cssSelector("....")).click();
    }

This turned out really ugly though because if I have 10 elements to verify, this IF condition needs to be written 10 times.

Any workaround to make it neat?

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Jun 06 '13 at 01:37

There are ways to find elements without throwing exceptions by using try-catch conditions inside of loops. For example, this method I wrote (which can be simplified depending on what you use if for) will return a WebElement and it makes sure that it's clickable before returning it to you:

public static WebElement getElementByLocator( By locator ) {
  driver.manage().timeouts().implicitlyWait( 5, TimeUnit.SECONDS );
  WebElement we = null;
  boolean unfound = true;
  int tries = 0;
  while ( unfound && tries < 10 ) {
    tries += 1;
    try {
      we = driver.findElement( locator );
      unfound = false; // FOUND IT
    } catch ( StaleElementReferenceException ser ) {                        
      unfound = true;
    } catch ( NoSuchElementException nse ) {                        
      unfound = true;
    } catch ( Exception e ) {
      staticlogger.info( e.getMessage() );
    }
  } 
  driver.manage().timeouts().implicitlyWait( DEFAULT_IMPLICIT_WAIT, 
      TimeUnit.SECONDS );
  return we;
}

erm in what way is that not using exceptions?! – JonnyRaa Feb 06 '14 at 10:22 — JonnyRaa, Feb 06 '14 at 10:22
I said "without throwing", not "without using". – djangofan Feb 07 '14 at 16:34 — djangofan, Feb 07 '14 at 16:34

score 1 · Answer 2 · edited Dec 08 '15 at 02:03

1

Solution could be many but that may hinder your architecture.

So easiest solution could be as follows:

Just create a method like optionalClick() in some utility class or somewhere with the arguments as:

locator_keyword: {values : id or cssSelector or xpath etc}
locator : {values : "q" }

Steps in method:

Get element based on the locator_keyword and locator
Check if element is there and click it
Otherwise don't do anything

This method can be used as a generic kind of thing for any type of objects.

edited Dec 08 '15 at 02:03

Eugene S

6,709
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answered Mar 21 '12 at 07:16

Nayan

316
3
2

thanks for the feedback!! another issue is, using if syntax is horribly slow...is there any way to make it faster? – user1282634 Mar 21 '12 at 10:56
Ok so don't use if statement at all Instead of that use try/catch block as folows: try{WebElement elemnt = driver.findElement(By.ID(".."));elemnt.click();}catch(Exception e){//Nothing to do} – Nayan Mar 22 '12 at 05:20

score 0 · Answer 3 · edited May 23 '17 at 11:53

Thanks for the pointer on using findelements. I think you'll also need wait logic though if you dont want it to return too early.

here is my solution in c#.

It basically reimplements the wait logic in the selenium library - unfortunately the method that does the waiting isnt exposed (annoyingly it also rethrows exceptions the wrong way and loses the stack traces!).

You'd probably have to modify it a little for java - not sure what the selenium API is there when you cant just pass around functions.

Wait reimplementation:

    private IWebElement WaitAndSeeIf(Func<IWebElement> canGet)
    {
        var end = DateTime.Now.AddSeconds(1);

        IWebElement element;
        while (true)
        {
            element = canGet();

            if (element != null)
                break;

            var time = DateTime.Now;
            if (time > end)
                break;

            Thread.Sleep(200);
        }
        return element;
    }

calling code:

        var dashboardButton = WaitAndSeeIf(() =>
                                               {
                                                   var elements = Driver.FindElements(By.XPath("//button[contains(.//*,'Dashboard')]"));
                                                   return elements.Any() ? elements.Single() : null;
                                               });

So far I've found this useful in a couple of places (checking for the presence of dialogs in extjs etc) but have yet had the need to muck around and make it configurable. I supppose the nicest thing to do would be to have it take the implicit wait time as mentioned in the other answer.

Using webdriver to see if an element exists WITHOUT throwing an exception?

3 Answers3