Check element exists using PHP Selenium 2 Webdriver? - php

Question

I am trying to check if an element on a page exists by CSS using Selenium 2. Anyone have any examples using PHP Selenium Webdriver Facebook wrapper?
I have tried the below code:
if($driver->findElement(WebDriverBy::xpath("image-e4e")) != 0)
{
}
But gives me this error:
Fatal error: Uncaught exception 'NoSuchElementWebDriverError' with
message 'Unable to locate element:
{"method":"xpath","selector":"image-e4e"}

Answer 1

By design, findElement returns the WebDriverElement if it is found but it throws an exception when it is not found.
To check whether the element is on the page without getting an exception, the trick is to use findElements. findElements returns an array of all elements found on the page. It returns an empty array if nothing is found.
if (count($driver->findElements(WebDriverBy::xpath("image-e4e"))) === 0) {
echo 'not found';
}

Answer 2

Use: $driver->findElements intstead of findElement
findElements will return an empty array if element not exists and will not throw an exception.

Answer 3

You can also use the sizeof() builtin function in PHP:
$check = $driver->findElements(WebDriverBy::xpath('image-e4e'));
if (sizeof($check) > 0) {
echo "success";
}
OR can also be used to count() function:
if (count($driver->findElements(WebDriverBy::xpath('image-e4e'))) > 0) {
echo "success";
}
Output: If XPath element is available on a page then it will give you success
If you want to use findElement then:
$checkXpath = 'image-e4e';
$checkXpath = $this->findElementByXpath($driver, $checkXpath);
$check = $driver->findElement($checkXpath);
if (count($check) > 0) {
echo "success";
}
OR
$checkXpath = WebDriverBy::xpath('image-e4e');
$check = $driver->findElement($checkXpath);
if (count($check) > 0) {
echo "success";
}
Output: If XPath element is available on a page then it will give you success
Note: The findElement method throws a NoSuchElementException exception when the element is not available on the page. Whereas, the findElements method returns an empty list when the element is not available or doesn't exist on the page.

Answer 4

That's because your xpath is bad.
If you want to continue using xpath, then your seletor would be
//*[#id='image-e4e']
If you have an open mind, get used to CSS Selectors. They are faster and much more readable
WebDriverBy::cssSelector("#image-e4e")
This is of course assuming that the ID is image-e4e. The reason your xpath was failing was because xpath was attempting to locate an immedate child with tag name image-e4e. you want to parse the entire pom for an element with an attribute that equals image-e4e. Whether that's ID or name, I do not know.

Answer 5

if($driver->findElement(WebDriverBy::id("image-e4e")) != 0)
{
}
Try the above logic I am sure definitely it will work out.