How to check if an element is visible with WebDriver

Question

With WebDriver from Selenium 2.0a2 I am having trouble checking if an element is visible.

WebDriver.findElement returns a WebElement<

Answer 1

I have the following 2 suggested ways:

1. You can use isDisplayed() as below:

   driver.findElement(By.id("idOfElement")).isDisplayed();
   

2. You can define a method as shown below and call it:

   public boolean isElementPresent(By by) {
     try {
       driver.findElement(by);
       return true;
     }
   catch (org.openqa.selenium.NoSuchElementException e) {
       return false;
     }
   }
   

Now, you can do assertion as below to check either the element is present or not:

assertTrue(isElementPresent(By.id("idOfElement")));