WebDriver: check if an element exists? [duplicate]

Question

How to check if an element exist with web driver?

Is using a try catch really the only possible way?

boolean present; try {    driver.findElement(By.id("logoutLink"));    present = true; } catch (NoSuchElementException e) {    present = false; } 

Answer 1

You could alternatively do:

driver.findElements( By.id("...") ).size() != 0 

Which saves the nasty try/catch

p.s.

Or more precisely by @JanHrcek here

!driver.findElements(By.id("...")).isEmpty() 

Answer 2

I agree with Mike's answer but there's an implicit 3 second wait if no elements are found which can be switched on/off which is useful if you're performing this action a lot:

driver.manage().timeouts().implicitlyWait(0, TimeUnit.MILLISECONDS); boolean exists = driver.findElements( By.id("...") ).size() != 0 driver.manage().timeouts().implicitlyWait(3, TimeUnit.SECONDS); 

Putting that into a utility method should improve performance if you're running a lot of tests