Codeception undefined index: ELEMENT error - php

Question

i am using Codeception for acceptance testing. On my local pc i have no problems to run the tests with selenium and chromedriver. Until 1 week, it works also fine at my git, but now, there comes this error.
"[PHPUnit\Framework\Exception] Undefined index: ELEMENT"
local it is working fine without errors.
I already searched this error and found an tip, that i have to start selenium with "-enablepassthrough false". But this does not really works.
Before 1 week with all the same setup, it works fine.
this is my acceptance.suite.yml:
actor: AcceptanceTester
modules:
enabled:
- WebDriver:
url: 'https://website.com'
host: 'selenium__standalone-chrome'
port: 4444
browser: chrome
window_size: 1920x1080

Answer 1

For Chrome/ChromeDriver v79 setting w3c to false in acceptance.suite.yml helped:
modules:
enabled:
- WebDriver:
capabilities:
chromeOptions:
w3c: false

Answer 2

This error message...
[PHPUnit\Framework\Exception] Undefined index: ELEMENT
...implies that the ChromeDriver's click() through Codeception is having an issue.
As per #reinholdfuereder's comment within the discussion facebook/php-webdriver - W3C WebDriver protocol support:
When using default W3C protocol, then the Codeception (v2.5.6) test fails with Undefined index: ELEMENT in waitForElement() operation.
When using legacy protocol, then the test succeeds for waitForElement() operation, which is followed by a seemingly also successful click() operation, but fails in the waitForElementNotVisible() operation.
Codeception's click() operation is translated into clickElement WebDriver command that is seemingly no more supported by ChromeDriver v75.
Solution
If you are using ChromeDriver v75.x and Chromium v75.x and you are seeing this error, you need to pass an additional chromeOptions w3c set to true.
Outro
You can find a couple of detailed discussion in:
How to turn off w3c in chromedriver to address the error unknown command: Cannot call non W3C standard command while in W3C
Cannot call non W3C standard command while in W3C mode (Selenium::WebDriver::Error::UnknownCommandError) with Selenium ChromeDriver in Cucumber Ruby

Answer 3

As #DebanjanB explained, setting the said option is a solution and this is what you get by updating facebook/php-webdriver to version >= 1.7.0
I think an even more solid solution (or habit) for your application is to use a specific docker image.
Your yaml makes me guess that you're using the selenium/standalone-chrome docker image. With their latest release (3.141.59-palladium) they updated the included Chrome version from 74 to 75 (see: https://github.com/SeleniumHQ/docker-selenium/releases).
Your local machine probably still runs an older version with Chrome 74 so no problems there. But whenever you rebuild the docker machine (e.g. when using some CI environment) you get the latest version. In this case a new Chrome version. Which "forces" you to also upgrade your php machine with a new facebook/php-webdriver.
I'd suggest to specify a version of the image to prevent these unwanted side effects, like
image: selenium/standalone-chrome:3.141.59-oxygen
or, if you've already made it run with Chrome 75, 3.141.59-palladium.