How do I verify that an element does not exist in Selenium 2

Question

In Selenium 2 I want to ensure that an element on the page that the driver has loaded does not exist. I'm including my naive implementation here.

    WebElement deleteLink = null;     try {         deleteLink = driver.findElement(By.className("commentEdit"));     } catch (NoSuchElementException e) {      }     assertTrue(deleteLink != null); 

Is there a more elegant way that basically verifies to assert that NoSuchElementException was thrown?

Answer 1

If you are testing using junit and that is the only thing you are testing you could make the test expect an exception using

@Test (expected=NoSuchElementException.class) public void someTest() {     driver.findElement(By.className("commentEdit")); } 

Or you could use the findElements method that returns an list of elements or an empty list if none are found (does not throw NoSuchElementException):

... List<WebElement> deleteLinks = driver.findElements(By.className("commentEdit")); assertTrue(deleteLinks.isEmpty()); ... 

or

.... assertTrue(driver.findElements(By.className("commentEdit")).isEmpty()); .... 

Answer 2

You can use this:

Boolean exist = driver.findElements(By.whatever(whatever)).size() == 0; 

If it doesn't exist will return true.