Question

I’m using Selenium WebDriver (v2.2) to “switch” to the “top” frame like so:

webdriver.SwitchTo().Frame("relative=top");

This generates an error message:

Unable to locate frame: relative=top

Can this be caused because the page I’m using has no frames?

EDIT

Unfortunately, both solutions that involve window switching fail:

webdriver.SwitchTo().Window(winHandle);
webdriver.SwitchTo().DefaultContent();

Strictly speaking, actually, they don’t fail. But, here’s the problem: Let’s say I fetch an IWebElement within a frame. Here’s what the code roughly looks like:

descend-into-the-frame
grab-the-element
ascend-out-of-the-frame-to-the-top
use-the-element

When I use-the-element, I get a “Element does not exist in the cache” exception. This is because the ascend-out-of-the-frame-to-the-top switches the window, which clears the cache. Quite annoying. I have figured out a workaround, though:

ascend-out-of-the-frame-to-the-top
descend-into-the-frame
grab-the-element
use-the-element

This still means I have to watch out for element-not-in-the-cache situations. But at least as long as I use an element immediately after fetching it, I’m ok.

Thanks for the help everyone!

Answer 1

I assume you Selenium IDE gave you that code when you switched from one frame to another. What I did is to store the window handle of the parent window, so that you can switch back to it later.

String _whandle = driver.getWindowHandle();
...
driver.switchTo().window(whandle);
driver.switchTo().frame("frameA");
driver.findElement(By.id("buttonA")).click();
driver.switchTo().window(whandle);
driver.switchTo().frame("frameB");
driver.findElement(By.id("buttonB")).click();