How to wait for invisibility of an element through PageFactory using Selenium and Java

Question

Is there a way to wait for an element not present in Selenium using PageFactory annotations?

When using:

@FindBy(css= '#loading-content')
WebElement pleaseWait;

to locate the element, and then:

wait.until(ExpectedConditions.invisibilityOfElementLocated(pleaseWait));

I would get:

org.opeqa.selenium.WebElement cannot be converted to org.openqa.selenium.By

I am able to do what I need by using:

wait.until(ExpectedConditions.invisibilityOfElementLocated(By.cssSelector('loading-content')));

However, I would like to be able to use the PageFactory annotations in order to keep the framework consistent. Is there a way to do this?

Answer 1

When using PageFactory in PageObjectModel if you expect the element to be invisible, you can use the Explicit Wait support with a normal locator factory and use either of the following solutions:

---

invisibilityOfElementLocated()

invisibilityOfElementLocated() is the implementation for an expectation for checking that an element is either invisible or not present on the DOM. It is defined as follows:

public static ExpectedCondition<java.lang.Boolean> invisibilityOfElementLocated(By locator)
An expectation for checking that an element is either invisible or not present on the DOM.

Parameters:
    locator - used to find the element

Returns:
    true if the element is not displayed or the element doesn't exist or stale element

• Code Block:

  import org.openqa.selenium.WebDriver;
  import org.openqa.selenium.WebElement;
  import org.openqa.selenium.support.FindBy;
  import org.openqa.selenium.support.PageFactory;
  import org.openqa.selenium.support.ui.WebDriverWait;
  
  public class fooPage {
  
      WebDriver driver;
      public fooPage(WebDriver driver)
      {
          PageFactory.initElements(driver, this);
      }
  
      //you don't need this
      //@FindBy(css= '#loading-content')
      //WebElement pleaseWait;
  
      public void foo()
      {
          Boolean bool = new WebDriverWait(driver, 20).until(ExpectedConditions.invisibilityOfElementLocated(By.cssSelector('#loading-content')));
          //other lines of code
      }
  }
  

---

As an alternative you can also use the invisibilityOf() method as follows:

invisibilityOf()

invisibilityOf() is the implementation for an expectation for checking the element to be invisible. It is defined as follows:

public static ExpectedCondition<java.lang.Boolean> invisibilityOf(WebElement element)
An expectation for checking the element to be invisible

Parameters:
    element - used to check its invisibility

Returns:
    Boolean true when elements is not visible anymore

• Code Block:

  import org.openqa.selenium.WebDriver;
  import org.openqa.selenium.WebElement;
  import org.openqa.selenium.support.FindBy;
  import org.openqa.selenium.support.PageFactory;
  import org.openqa.selenium.support.ui.WebDriverWait;
  
  public class fooPage {
  
      WebDriver driver;
      public fooPage(WebDriver driver)
      {
          PageFactory.initElements(driver, this);
      }
  
  
      @FindBy(css= '#loading-content')
      WebElement pleaseWait;
  
      public void foo()
      {
          Boolean bool = new WebDriverWait(driver, 20).until(ExpectedConditions.invisibilityOf(fooPage.getWebElement()));
          //other lines of code
      }
  
      public WebElement getWebElement()
      {
          return pleaseWait;
      }
  }
  

You can find a detailed discussion in How to use explicit waits with PageFactory fields and the PageObject pattern

Answer 2

invisibilityOfElementLocated is expecting a locator but you are sending a web-element and that is why it is throwing an error. You can perform the operation by checking the webelement list by using:

wait.until(ExpectedConditions.invisibilityOfAllElements(Arrays.asList(pleaseWait)));

Updated Answer:
If you want to check that the element is not present on the page then you can check its list size is equal to 0 or not, as its list size will be 0 when its not displayed on the UI.

You can get the list of the element by using:

@FindBy(css='#loading-content')
List<WebElement> pleaseWait;

And you can check the list size equals to 0 by using:

if(pleaseWait.size()==0){
     System.out.println("Element is not visible on the page");
     // Add the further code here
}

And this would not give NoSuchElement exception as well.