Selenium WebDriver - StaleElementReferenceException when using click()

Question

Sometimes when I execute code like this:

webDriver.findElement(By.xpath("//*[@class='classname']")).click();

I get this exception: org.openqa.selenium.StaleElementReferenceException: Element is no longer attached to the DOM I know I could do a retry, but does anyone know why this happens and how I can prevent it?

Seems that this element was deleted from Document. Maybe some javascript deleted it. Maybe your code executes too fast and that element doesn't appears after some javascript logic? — Sergey Litvinov
– Sergey Litvinov, Commented Feb 6, 2014 at 15:03

Maxim Kim · Accepted Answer · 2014-02-07 07:51:26Z

2

I had the same problem.

My solution is:

webDriver.clickOnStableElement(By.xpath("//*[@class='classname']"));
...
        public void clickOnStableElement(final By locator) {
            WebElement e = new WebDriverWait(driver, 10).until(new ExpectedCondition<WebElement>(){
                public WebElement apply(WebDriver d) {
                   try {
                       return d.findElement(locator);
                   } catch (StaleElementReferenceException ex) {
                       return null;
                   }
               }
            });
            e.click();
         }

Hope it would help you. ;)

answered Feb 7, 2014 at 7:51

Maxim Kim

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Algiz · Accepted Answer · 2014-02-06 15:50:55Z

0

webDriver.findElement(By.xpath("//*[@class='classname']"))

returns you a WebElement object.

A WebElement object refer always to a node into the HTML DOM tree (within the memory of your web browser).

You got this exception when the node in the DOM tree does not exist anymore. The WebElement object still exist because it is inside the JVM's memory. It is kind of "broken link". You can call method on the WebElement but they will fail.

answered Feb 6, 2014 at 15:50

Algiz

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