How to Handle Stale Element Reference Exception in Selenium WebDriver?

How to Tackle Stale Element Reference Exception in Selenium WebDriver

Selenium WebDriver's Stale Element Reference Exception occurs when you try to use a reference to an element in the DOM that has been invalidated or is no longer valid. This can occur when complex web pages modify their DOM dynamically, causing elements to be destroyed and recreated.

Understanding WebElement

A WebElement represents an element in the DOM. As a result of dynamic page behavior, elements can be destroyed and then re-created, making existing WebElement references invalid.

Resolving Stale Element Reference Exception

Whenever encountering a StaleElementException, the solution lies in refreshing your reference by finding the element again. This process involves locating the element once more using a reliable locator strategy, such as By.id or By.xpath.

Real-World Example

Consider the following code snippet:

WebElement element = driver.findElement(By.id("my-element"));
element.click();
// Page is modified dynamically
driver.findElement(By.id("my-element")).sendKeys("New Value"); // Stale Element Reference Exception

To resolve this exception, we can refresh our WebElement reference:

WebElement refreshedElement = driver.findElement(By.id("my-element"));
refreshedElement.sendKeys("New Value");

By re-finding the element, we ensure that we have a valid reference to the DOM element and can continue interacting with it.

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