Selenium Webdriver (VBA): Explicit Wait

Question

I am navigating a web application that will often throw an error if there is an attempt to click an element before it can be interacted with.

When using Selenium WebDriver (java), I can easily work around the problem:

 WebDriverWait wait = new WebDriverWait(driver, 15);

 wait.until(ExpectedConditions.elementToBeClickable(By.id("element")));

However, I am trying to write the script in VBA utilizing the Selenium type library, and, despite trying numerous different ways, the only success I am having is:

webdriver.wait

which I have been told should be avoided if at all possible. If someone can advise how to translate my java into VBA, or provide any other solution, I would be extremely grateful.

Answer 1

You might try looping until the element has been set correctly with a time out to ensure you can't go into an infinite loop. The danger with the accepted answer is there is no way to escape the loop if not found.

Dim t As Date, ele As Object
t = Timer
Do
    DoEvents
    On Error Resume Next
    Set ele = .FindElementById("element")
    On Error GoTo 0
    If Timer - t = 10 Then Exit Do '<==To avoid infinite loop
Loop While ele Is Nothing

---

Note: User @florentbr wrote a js wait clickable function to be executed via Selenium Basic. Example in this SO answer.

Answer 2

In vba you can use Implicit wait "driver.Timeouts.ImplicitWait = 10 'Timeunits 'seconds" it will wait maximum limit if the element is found before the set time it will process further.

Answer 3

The selenium plugin for VBA is unofficial and doesn't support this feature.

You can work around this by using onError to retry the action that is producing an error until it succeeds or times out:

Sub test
    OnError GoTo Retry
        webDriver.findElementById("element")
    Exit Sub

    Dim i as integer
    :Retry
        webDriver.Wait(500)
        i = i + 1
        if i = 20 then onerror go to 0
    Resume
end sub