selenium: Exception in thread "main" org.openqa.selenium.StaleElementReferenceException:

Question

I am working on clicking on the navigation links(marked as 1,2,...Next) for a particular search in the site dice.com

When I run the below mentioned code, it is executed once and then displays StaleElementReferenceException

Request you to help in resolving this issue

import java.util.List;

import org.openqa.selenium.By;
import org.openqa.selenium.WebDriver;
import org.openqa.selenium.WebElement;
import org.openqa.selenium.firefox.FirefoxDriver;
public class Ex2 {  
public static void main(String[] args) {

    WebDriver driver=new FirefoxDriver();
    driver.get("http://dice.com");
       driver.findElement(By.xpath("//input[@id='FREE_TEXT']")).sendKeys("Selenium");
    driver. findElement(By.xpath("//*[@id='searchSubmit']")).click();

    //block that has navigation links
    WebElement b=driver.findElement(By.xpath("//*[@id='yui-main']/div/div[1]/div[1]/div[1][@class='pageProg']"));

              //navigation links
    List<WebElement> allLinks=b.findElements(By.tagName("a"));
    System.out.println("Total links -->" + allLinks.size());    


    for(int i=0;i<allLinks.size();i++){

        allLinks.get(i).click();
        Thread.sleep(5000);
    }

}

}

The error displayed is

Exception in thread "main" org.openqa.selenium.StaleElementReferenceException: Element not found in the cache - perhaps the page has changed since it was looked up Command duration or timeout: 59 milliseconds For documentation on this error, please visit: http://seleniumhq.org/exceptions/stale_element_reference.html Build info: version: '2.35.0', revision: '8df0c6b', time: '2013-08-12 15:43:19' System info: os.name: 'Windows 8', os.arch: 'amd64', os.version: '6.2', java.version: '1.7.0_11' Session ID: 0410f597-c149-46b5-a2b7-e84c61cc73f1

Richard · Accepted Answer · 2013-10-03 07:00:51Z

1

The issue is when you click the first link, the page is reloaded, and the reference Selenium has to the page becomes stale. I think this approach will work for you instead:

List<WebElement> allLinks=b.findElements(By.tagName("a"));
System.out.println("Total links -->" + allLinks.size());    

String[] linkText = new String[allLinks.size()];

for(int i=0;i<allLinks.size();i++)
{
    linkText[i] = allLinks.get(i).text;
}

for(int i=0;i<linkText.length;i++)
{
    findElements(By.linktext(linkText).click();
    Thread.sleep(5000);
}

answered Oct 3, 2013 at 7:00

Richard

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Comments

Abhishek Singh · Accepted Answer · 2013-10-03 06:53:14Z

0

use this as a work around

try{
//Your code which causes exception

}
catch(org.openqa.selenium.StaleElementReferenceException e){
//Repeat the code in try
}

Reason for exception is because javascript has loaded the element one more time with same name or id or whatever and you are still referring to element which is not present now.

answered Oct 3, 2013 at 6:53

Abhishek Singh

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