Selenium C# WebDriver: Wait until element is present

Question

I want to make sure that an element is present before the webdriver starts doing stuff.

I\'m trying to get something like this to work:

WebDriverWait w         


        

Answer 1

// Wait up to 5 seconds with no minimum for a UI element to be found
WebDriverWait wait = new WebDriverWait(_pagedriver, TimeSpan.FromSeconds(5));
IWebElement title = wait.Until<IWebElement>((d) =>
{
    return d.FindElement(By.ClassName("MainContentHeader"));
});

Answer 2

Used Rn222 and Aknuds1 to use an ISearchContext that returns either a single element, or a list. And a minimum number of elements can be specified:

public static class SearchContextExtensions
{
    /// <summary>
    ///     Method that finds an element based on the search parameters within a specified timeout.
    /// </summary>
    /// <param name="context">The context where this is searched. Required for extension methods</param>
    /// <param name="by">The search parameters that are used to identify the element</param>
    /// <param name="timeOutInSeconds">The time that the tool should wait before throwing an exception</param>
    /// <returns> The first element found that matches the condition specified</returns>
    public static IWebElement FindElement(this ISearchContext context, By by, uint timeOutInSeconds)
    {
        if (timeOutInSeconds > 0)
        {
            var wait = new DefaultWait<ISearchContext>(context);
            wait.Timeout = TimeSpan.FromSeconds(timeOutInSeconds);
            return wait.Until<IWebElement>(ctx => ctx.FindElement(by));
        }
        return context.FindElement(by);
    }
    /// <summary>
    ///     Method that finds a list of elements based on the search parameters within a specified timeout.
    /// </summary>
    /// <param name="context">The context where this is searched. Required for extension methods</param>
    /// <param name="by">The search parameters that are used to identify the element</param>
    /// <param name="timeoutInSeconds">The time that the tool should wait before throwing an exception</param>
    /// <returns>A list of all the web elements that match the condition specified</returns>
    public static IReadOnlyCollection<IWebElement> FindElements(this ISearchContext context, By by, uint timeoutInSeconds)
    {

        if (timeoutInSeconds > 0)
        {
            var wait = new DefaultWait<ISearchContext>(context);
            wait.Timeout = TimeSpan.FromSeconds(timeoutInSeconds);
            return wait.Until<IReadOnlyCollection<IWebElement>>(ctx => ctx.FindElements(by));
        }
        return context.FindElements(by);
    }
    /// <summary>
    ///     Method that finds a list of elements with the minimum amount specified based on the search parameters within a specified timeout.<br/>
    /// </summary>
    /// <param name="context">The context where this is searched. Required for extension methods</param>
    /// <param name="by">The search parameters that are used to identify the element</param>
    /// <param name="timeoutInSeconds">The time that the tool should wait before throwing an exception</param>
    /// <param name="minNumberOfElements">
    ///     The minimum number of elements that should meet the criteria before returning the list <para/>
    ///     If this number is not met, an exception will be thrown and no elements will be returned
    ///     even if some did meet the criteria
    /// </param>
    /// <returns>A list of all the web elements that match the condition specified</returns>
    public static IReadOnlyCollection<IWebElement> FindElements(this ISearchContext context, By by, uint timeoutInSeconds, int minNumberOfElements)
    {
        var wait = new DefaultWait<ISearchContext>(context);
        if (timeoutInSeconds > 0)
        {
            wait.Timeout = TimeSpan.FromSeconds(timeoutInSeconds);
        }

        // Wait until the current context found the minimum number of elements. If not found after timeout, an exception is thrown
        wait.Until<bool>(ctx => ctx.FindElements(by).Count >= minNumberOfElements);

        //If the elements were successfuly found, just return the list
        return context.FindElements(by);
    }

}

Example usage:

var driver = new FirefoxDriver();
driver.Navigate().GoToUrl("http://localhost");
var main = driver.FindElement(By.Id("main"));
// It can be now used to wait when using elements to search
var btn = main.FindElement(By.Id("button"),10);
btn.Click();
//This will wait up to 10 seconds until a button is found
var button = driver.FindElement(By.TagName("button"),10)
//This will wait up to 10 seconds until a button is found, and return all the buttons found
var buttonList = driver.FindElements(By.TagName("button"),10)
//This will wait for 10 seconds until we find at least 5 buttons
var buttonsMin= driver.FindElements(By.TagName("button"), 10, 5);
driver.Close();

Answer 3

Using the solution provided by Mike Kwan may have an impact in overall testing performance, since the implicit wait will be used in all FindElement calls.

Many times you'll want the FindElement to fail right away when an element is not present (you're testing for a malformed page, missing elements, etc.). With the implicit wait these operations would wait for the whole timeout to expire before throwing the exception. The default implicit wait is set to 0 seconds.

I've written a little extension method to IWebDriver that adds a timeout (in seconds) parameter to the FindElement() method. It's quite self-explanatory:

public static class WebDriverExtensions
{
    public static IWebElement FindElement(this IWebDriver driver, By by, int timeoutInSeconds)
    {
        if (timeoutInSeconds > 0)
        {
            var wait = new WebDriverWait(driver, TimeSpan.FromSeconds(timeoutInSeconds));
            return wait.Until(drv => drv.FindElement(by));
        }
        return driver.FindElement(by);
    }
}

I didn't cache the WebDriverWait object as its creation is very cheap, this extension may be used simultaneously for different WebDriver objects, and I only do optimizations when ultimately needed.

Usage is straightforward:

var driver = new FirefoxDriver();
driver.Navigate().GoToUrl("http://localhost/mypage");
var btn = driver.FindElement(By.CssSelector("#login_button"));
btn.Click();
var employeeLabel = driver.FindElement(By.CssSelector("#VCC_VSL"), 10);
Assert.AreEqual("Employee", employeeLabel.Text);
driver.Close();

Answer 4

First answer is good, my problem was that unhandled exceptions didn't close web driver properly and it kept the same first value I had used which was 1 second.

If you get the same problem

restart you visual studio and ensure that all the exceptions are handled properly.

Answer 5

You do not want to wait too long before the element changes. In this code the webdriver waits for up to 2 seconds before it continues.

WebDriverWait wait = new WebDriverWait(driver, TimeSpan.FromMilliseconds(2000));
wait.Until(ExpectedConditions.VisibilityOfAllElementsLocatedBy(By.Name("html-name")));

Answer 6

 new WebDriverWait(driver, TimeSpan.FromSeconds(10)).
   Until(ExpectedConditions.PresenceOfAllElementsLocatedBy((By.Id("toast-container"))));