How to wait for element to load in selenium webdriver?

Question

I am new to selenium webdriver and am testing one application. In my application, I have to test about linking Facebook Account. Whenever I click on link the pop up will be displayed where I have to enter credentials. I am able to link sometimes and sometimes the test fails. I know the reason because it takes time to load pop up window and next command is executed so it is not able to find the element. I have used Thread.Sleep but I want to use implicit wait or explicit wait which is always a good practice rather than Thread.Sleep. How to use implicit wait and where to use that command exactly? Please advice. Thanks.

 public void SocialFaceBook()
    {           
        string currentWindow = driver.CurrentWindowHandle;
        PopupWindowFinder finder = new PopupWindowFinder(driver);
        string facebookWindow = finder.Click(driver.FindElement(By.XPath("//div[@id='panelFacebook']/div[2]/div[3]/div[3]/a")));
        // Switch To FaceBook Window
        driver.SwitchTo().Window(facebookWindow);
        System.Threading.Thread.Sleep(3000);

        // Link
        // Email Address
        IWebElement faceBookLinkEmail = driver.FindElement(By.Id("email"));
        faceBookLinkEmail.SendKeys(SocialFaceBookEmail);

        // Password
        IWebElement faceBookLinkPass = driver.FindElement(By.Id("pass"));
        faceBookLinkPass.SendKeys(SocialFaceBookPass);

        // Log In Button
        IWebElement faceBookLinkLogin = driver.FindElement(By.XPath("//input[@id='u_0_1']"));
        faceBookLinkLogin.Click();

        // Switch To Main Window
        driver.SwitchTo().Window(currentWindow);
        System.Threading.Thread.Sleep(3000);

        // Sync            
        IWebElement faceBookSync = driver.FindElement(By.XPath("//div[@id='panelFacebook']/div[2]/div[3]/div[2]/a"));
        faceBookSync.Click();

        // Unlink
        IWebElement faceBookUnLink = driver.FindElement(By.XPath("//div[@id='panelFacebook']/div[2]/div[3]/div[1]/a"));
        faceBookUnLink.Click();
    }

Sometimes it is not able to find the log in details as pop up is not loaded properly and sometimes it is not able to find sync button as facebook account takes time to link. Please advice.

Answer 1

WebDriverWait wait = new WebDriverWait(driver, 30); wait.until(ExpectedConditions.visibilityOfElementLocated(By.id("locator")));

It will wait for the element to be located for a maximum of 30 seconds if the element is found before that it will execute....

Answer 2

I had to change some small things from @Vicky's answer but this is what I got as a method I could call.

public static void WaitForElementLoad(By by, int timeoutInSeconds)
    {
        if (timeoutInSeconds > 0)
        {
            WebDriverWait wait = new WebDriverWait(webDriver, TimeSpan.FromSeconds(timeoutInSeconds));
            wait.Until(ExpectedConditions.ElementIsVisible(by));
        }
    }

and I call it like this:

MyClass.WaitForElementLoad(By.CssSelector("div#div1 div strong a"), 10);

Answer 3

I used to write a function to detect an element exists every second. if find continue, otherwise threw timeout error. but in that function i still use Thread.Sleep.

Expect other good solution.

Answer 4

I use ExpectedCondition.visibilityOf(element) instead of thread sleeps

Answer 5

Implicit wait -- max waiting time to identify object, it will identify the object for every 500 ms. if it fails to identify the object with in maximum time it will throw nosuchelement exception.

Explicit wait -- used for ajax page loads for the same purpose.

maximum waiting time is same as thread.sleep

Answer 6

Wrote a method for a project:

public static void WaitForElementPresentBy(By by)
        {
            try
            {
                Wait.Until(ExpectedConditions.ElementIsVisible(by));
            }
            catch (TimeoutException te)
            {

                Assert.Fail("The element with selector {0} didn't appear. The exception was:\n {1}", by, te.ToString());
            }
        }

Wait should have already been defined.