Question

I’m testing a web application using Selenium WebDriver and I was wondering which is the proper method to check if the elements are present or displayed. I usually assert that all elements are present on the page but it also checks the hidden elements which in this case would also be necessary to check if the elements are displayed only when some action is done. For example I click a link and other fields and labels are displayed, while they were hidden before. In this case I should both check if the elements are present and also if they are or not displayed before and after some other element is clicked.

I was wondering which is the proper way to do this. Is it too much to check all the elements on the page ( assuming that I have some buttons, text-fields, labels, links etc. in the page)?

For the purpose of discussion I want to include some code snippets. To check that elements are present on the page I use the following snippet:

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

To check if an element is displayed I use the following snippet:

public boolean isElementDisplay(By by) {
    if (driver.findElement(by).isDisplayed()) {
        return true;
    } else
        return false;
}

One purpose of testing this application is to check if the elements exists and are displayed correctly. Am I doing the right thing here? Please give me your point of view. I’ve recently started working with Selenium WebDriver and being the only one in my company who does this…I don’t have anyone to turn to. Any answer is appreciated.

Answer 1

There are no problems with it, except if you call your “checkIfDisplayed” method on an element that doesn’t exist in the first place, it will throw an exception. I would modify it to this:

public boolean checkIfDisplayed(By by) {
    if (isElementPresent(by) {
    if (driver.findElement(by).isDisplayed()) {
        return true;
    } else
        return false;
    } else
        return false;
}

(This may not be code that compiles, I am a C# man, but you should see what I mean)

It may have a slight performance hit, but overall what you are doing is perfectly fine anyway.