How to use Selenium elements to wait, check, click on without finding the elements again?

Question

I am new to Selenium and was using Telerik free testing framework before. Problem is I am not able to understand, how to use elements which are already identified with [FindsBy] to wait, check and click on.

ex:

    [FindsBySequence]
    [FindsBy(How = How.Id, Using = "container-dimpanel")]
    [FindsBy(How = How.CssSelector , Using = ".btn.btn-primary.pull-right")]
    public IWebElement UpdateButton { get; set; }

    internal void ClickUpdateButton(TimeSpan timeout)
    {
        new WebDriverWait(_driver, timeout).
            Until(ExpectedConditions.ElementIsVisible(By.CssSelector(id));
        UpdateButton.Click();
    }

I want my code to wait for update button to be visible and then click on it. But I want to just pass the UpdateButton element rather than using By selector.

• not sure if UpdateButton.Enabled will wait until its visible.

Answer 1

There is an expected condition for visibility that accepts a WebElement: https://seleniumhq.github.io/selenium/docs/api/java/org/openqa/selenium/support/ui/ExpectedConditions.html#visibilityOf-org.openqa.selenium.WebElement-

Until also returns the element being waited for, so you can combine this into one line:

internal void ClickUpdateButton(TimeSpan timeout)
{
    WebDriverWait wait = new WebDriverWait(_driver, timeout);
    wait.Until(ExpectedConditions.visibilityOf(UpdateButton)).click();
}

However, in my frameworks I usually add a helper function that does this, as it get's used so much. You can also do similar things with wait until clickable, etc. and have methods that accept a WebElement or a By:

public WebElement waitThenClick(WebElement element) 
{
    WebDriverWait wait = new WebDriverWait(_driver, timeout);
    return wait.Until(ExpectedConditions.visibilityOf(UpdateButton)).click();
}

Answer 2

The C# client doesn't have a builtin condition to check the visibility for a proxied WebElement.

Moreover the expected condition ExpectedConditions.ElementIsVisible checks that the element is displayed but doesn't check that the element is visible from a user perspective.

So the quickest and most reliable way is to retry the click in a waiter until success:

Click(UpdateButton, 5);

static void Click(IWebElement element, int timeout = 5) {
    var wait = new DefaultWait<IWebElement>(element);
    wait.IgnoreExceptionTypes(typeof(WebDriverException));
    wait.PollingInterval = TimeSpan.FromMilliseconds(10);
    wait.Timeout = TimeSpan.FromSeconds(timeout);
    wait.Until<bool>(drv => {
        element.Click();
        return true;
    });
}