Advanced Stale elements

Question

I have been reading about stale elements and am still a bit confused. For instance, the following won't work, correct?

 public void clickFoo(WebElement ele) {
    try {
      ele.click();
    } catch (StaleElementReferenceException ex) {
      ele.click();
    }
 }

because if ele is stale, it will remain stale. The best thing is to redo the driver.findElement(By), but as you can see in this example, there is no xpath. You can attempt to ele.getAttribute("id") and use that, but if the element has no id, this also will not work. All methods calling this would have to put the try/catch around it, which may not be feasible.

Is there some other way the element could be refound? Also, assuming there is an id, would the id remain the same after the element goes stale? What in the WebElement object ele is different once it goes stale?

(Java Eclipse)

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered Jul 19 '16 at 18:08

I would recommend you NOT create a method like the above. There's no need to add another function layer on top of .click(). Just call .click() on the element itself.

driver.findElement(By.id("test-id")).click();

or

WebElement e = driver.findElement(By.id("test-id"));
e.click();

One way that I use regularly to avoid stale elements is find the element only when you need it and generally I do this by in a page object method. Here's a quick example.

The page object for a home page.

public class HomePage
{
    private WebDriver driver;
    public WebElement staleElement;
    private By waitForLocator = By.id("sampleId");

    // please put the variable declarations in alphabetical order
    private By sampleElementLocator = By.id("sampleId");

    public HomePage(WebDriver driver)
    {
        this.driver = driver;
        // wait for page to finish loading
        new WebDriverWait(driver, 10).until(ExpectedConditions.presenceOfElementLocated(waitForLocator));

        // see if we're on the right page
        if (!driver.getCurrentUrl().contains("samplePage.jsp"))
        {
            throw new IllegalStateException("This is not the XXXX Sample page. Current URL: " + driver.getCurrentUrl());
        }
    }

    public void clickSampleElement()
    {
        // sample method code goes here
        driver.findElement(sampleElementLocator).click();
    }
}

To use it

WebDriver driver = new FirefoxDriver();
driver.manage().window().maximize();
driver.get("http://www.example.com");
HomePage homePage = new HomePage(driver);
homePage.clickSampleElement();
// do stuff that changes the page and makes the element stale
homePage.clickSampleElement();

Now I no longer have to rely on an old reference. I just call the method again and it does all the work for me.

There are many references on the page object model. Here's one from the Selenium wiki. http://www.seleniumhq.org/docs/06_test_design_considerations.jsp#page-object-design-pattern

If you want to read more info on what a stale element is, the docs have a good explanation. http://docs.seleniumhq.org/exceptions/stale_element_reference.jsp

Thanks. I do understand that. It's just that some methods take an element, not an xpath. And some methods do use the page object @FindBy(), which is similar to what you said. But some elements are not known until runtime (for instance I have to find a div for a specific office, and then use that div.findBy... I suppose we should have tried to plan earlier always to know the xpath for an element (or id or whatever) when doing a click. — Tony, Jul 19 '16 at 19:23
For methods that take an element, you can find the element using the locator and then pass it to the method. If you have scenarios where you have to find an element for a specific office, you should be able to craft a locator to do that for you that will be dynamic. — JeffC, Jul 19 '16 at 19:34
Done. I used not to be able to upvote. Looks like I can now ;-) — Tony, Jul 20 '16 at 15:39

Advanced Stale elements

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