I am using Selenium WebDriver with java.
I am fetching all links from webpage and trying to click each link one by one. I am getting below error:
error org.openqa.selenium.StaleElementReferenceException: Element not found in the cache - perhaps the page has changed since it was looked up
Command duration or timeout: 30.01 seconds
For documentation on this error, please visit: http://seleniumhq.org/exceptions/stale_element_reference.html
Build info: version: '2.25.0', revision: '17482', time: '2012-07-18 21:09:54'
and here is my code :
public void getLinks()throws Exception{
try {
List<WebElement> links = driver.findElements(By.tagName("a"));
int linkcount = links.size();
System.out.println(links.size());
for (WebElement myElement : links){
String link = myElement.getText();
System.out.println(link);
System.out.println(myElement);
if (link !=""){
myElement.click();
Thread.sleep(2000);
System.out.println("third");
}
//Thread.sleep(5000);
}
}catch (Exception e){
System.out.println("error "+e);
}
}
actually, it's displaying in output
[[FirefoxDriver: firefox on XP (ce0da229-f77b-4fb8-b017-df517845fa78)] -> tag name: a]
as link, I want to eliminate these form result.
There is no such a good idea to have following scenario :
for (WebElement element : webDriver.findElements(locator.getBy())){
element.click();
}
Why? Because there is no guarantee that the element.click();
will have no effect on other found elements, so the DOM
may be changed, so hence the StaleElementReferenceException
.
It is better to use the following scenario :
int numberOfElementsFound = getNumberOfElementsFound(locator);
for (int pos = 0; pos < numberOfElementsFound; pos++) {
getElementWithIndex(locator, pos).click();
}
This is better because you will always take the WebElement
refreshed, even the previous click had some effects on it.
EDIT : Example added
public int getNumberOfElementsFound(By by) {
return webDriver.findElements(by).size();
}
public WebElement getElementWithIndex(By by, int pos) {
return webDriver.findElements(by).get(pos);
}
Hope to be enough.
WebDriver _driver = new InternetExplorerDriver();
_driver.navigate().to("http://www.google.co.in/");
List <WebElement> alllinks = _driver.findElements(By.tagName("a"));
for(int i=0;i<alllinks.size();i++)
System.out.println(alllinks.get(i).getText());
for(int i=0;i<alllinks.size();i++){
alllinks.get(i).click();
_driver.navigate().back();
}
If you're OK using WebDriver.get()
instead of WebElement.click()
to test the links, an alternate approach is to save the href
value of each found WebElement
in a separate list. This way you avoid the StaleElementReferenceException
because you're not trying to reuse subsequent WebElement
s after navigating away with the first WebElement.click()
.
Basic example:
List<String> hrefs = new ArrayList<String>();
List<WebElement> anchors = driver.findElements(By.tagName("a"));
for ( WebElement anchor : anchors ) {
hrefs.add(anchor.getAttribute("href"));
}
for ( String href : hrefs ) {
driver.get(href);
}
Credit goes to "loan".
I am also getting "stale exception" so I used 'loan' answer and works perfectly. Just if anyone need to know how to click on each link from results page try this (java)
clickAllHyperLinksByTagName("h3");
where "h3" tag contains hyperlink
public static void clickAllHyperLinksByTagName(String tagName){
int numberOfElementsFound = getNumberOfElementsFound(By.tagName(tagName));
System.out.println(numberOfElementsFound);
for (int pos = 0; pos < numberOfElementsFound; pos++) {
getElementWithIndex(By.tagName(tagName), pos).click();
driver.navigate().back();
}
}
public static int getNumberOfElementsFound(By by) {
return driver.findElements(by).size();
}
public static WebElement getElementWithIndex(By by, int pos) {
return driver.findElements(by).get(pos);
}
//extract the link texts of each link element
for (WebElement elements : linkElements) {
linkTexts[i] = elements.getText();
i++;
}
//test each link
for (String t : linkTexts) {
driver.findElement(By.linkText(t)).click();
if (driver.getTitle().equals(notWorkingUrlTitle )) {
System.out.println("\"" + t + "\""
+ " is not working.");
} else {
System.out.println("\"" + t + "\""
+ " is working.");
}
driver.navigate().back();
}
driver.quit();
}
For complete Explanation Read This POST
List <WebElement> links = driver.findElements(By.tagName("a"));
int linkCount=links.size();
System.out.println("Total number of page on the webpage:"+ linkCount);
String[] texts=new String[linkCount];
int t=0;
for (WebElement text:links){
texts[t]=text.getText();//extract text from link and put in Array
//System.out.println(texts[t]);
t++;
}
for (String clicks:texts) {
driver.findElement(By.linkText(clicks)).click();
if (driver.getTitle().equals("notWorkingUrlTitle" )) {
System.out.println("\"" + t + "\""
+ " is not working.");
} else {
System.out.println("\"" + t + "\""
+ " is working.");
}
driver.navigate().back();
}
driver.quit();