Check element exists using PHP Selenium 2 Webdriver?

Question

I am trying to check if an element on a page exists by CSS using Selenium 2. Anyone have any examples using PHP Selenium Webdriver Facebook wrapper?

I have tried the below code:

if($driver->findElement(WebDriverBy::xpath("image-e4e")) != 0)
{
}

But gives me this error:

Fatal error: Uncaught exception 'NoSuchElementWebDriverError' with message 'Unable to locate element: {"method":"xpath","selector":"image-e4e"}

Answer 1

By design, findElement returns the WebDriverElement if it is found but it throws an exception when it is not found.

To check whether the element is on the page without getting an exception, the trick is to use findElements. findElements returns an array of all elements found on the page. It returns an empty array if nothing is found.

if (count($driver->findElements(WebDriverBy::xpath("image-e4e"))) === 0) {
  echo 'not found';
}

Answer 2

Use: $driver->findElements intstead of findElement

findElements will return an empty array if element not exists and will not throw an exception.