How to avoid “StaleElementReferenceException” in Selenium?

Question

I\'m implementing a lot of Selenium tests using Java. Sometimes, my tests fail due to a StaleElementReferenceException. Could you suggest some approaches to mak

Answer 1

I was having this issue intermittently. Unbeknownst to me, BackboneJS was running on the page and replacing the element I was trying to click. My code looked like this.

driver.findElement(By.id("checkoutLink")).click();

Which is of course functionally the same as this.

WebElement checkoutLink = driver.findElement(By.id("checkoutLink"));
checkoutLink.click();

What would occasionally happen was the javascript would replace the checkoutLink element in between finding and clicking it, ie.

WebElement checkoutLink = driver.findElement(By.id("checkoutLink"));
// javascript replaces checkoutLink
checkoutLink.click();

Which rightfully led to a StaleElementReferenceException when trying to click the link. I couldn't find any reliable way to tell WebDriver to wait until the javascript had finished running, so here's how I eventually solved it.

new WebDriverWait(driver, timeout)
    .ignoring(StaleElementReferenceException.class)
    .until(new Predicate() {
        @Override
        public boolean apply(@Nullable WebDriver driver) {
            driver.findElement(By.id("checkoutLink")).click();
            return true;
        }
    });

This code will continually try to click the link, ignoring StaleElementReferenceExceptions until either the click succeeds or the timeout is reached. I like this solution because it saves you having to write any retry logic, and uses only the built-in constructs of WebDriver.