Question

I have a C# unit test using Selenium WebDriver to test to see if a link exists. Here’s the code:

   [TestMethod()]
    public void RegisterLinkExistTest()
    {
        IWebElement registerLink = genericBrowserDriver.FindElement(By.PartialLinkText ("Register1"));
        Assert.AreEqual("Register here", registerLink.Text, "Failed");
    }

I wanted to see what happens if I set the PartialLinkText as “Register1” instead of “Register”. MSTest failed this test with a exception thrown from Selenium. I wanted the Assert.AreEqual to execute but MSTest throws a exception on the previous line. I know I can use ExpectedException attribute to specify “OpenQA.Selenium.NoSuchElementException” but I don’t want to do that way because I’m not expecting that exception. How do I go about handling this?

Answer 1

As @AD.Net already said, your test is working as expected.

You could catch the exception in case the link was not found but I don’t see the point to do that. If the link is not found then the registerLink will be null. What’s the point of asserting on a null object’s property?

Your test works fine, just delete the Assert line.

However, if you also want to test the link’s text try the following code:

[TestMethod()]
public void RegisterLinkExistTest()
{
    try
    {
        IWebElement registerLink = genericBrowserDriver.FindElement(By.PartialLinkText ("Register1"));
        Assert.AreEqual("Register here", registerLink.Text, "Register's link text mismatch");
    }
    catch(NoSuchElementException)
    {
        Assert.Fail("The register link was not found");
    }
}

EDIT

You can seperate your test, the first test will check if the link exists and the second will assert it’s properties.

[TestMethod()]
public void RegisterLinkExistTest()
{
    IWebElement registerLink = genericBrowserDriver.FindElement(By.PartialLinkText ("Register1"));
}

[TestMethod()]
public void RegisterLinkTextTest()
{
    IWebElement registerLink = genericBrowserDriver.FindElement(By.PartialLinkText ("Register1"));
    Assert.AreEqual("Register here", registerLink.Text, "Register's link text mismatch");
}

Then use an OrderedTest and add them in that order so the RegisterLinkExistTest will be executed first. If it fails then the second test will not run.