Stale Element Reference exception in Selenium Webdriver

There may be cases when you get exception “Element is no longer attached to the DOM”. This is due to State Element Execption.

I will show you the problem here and then it’s solution that how we can overcome with this issue.

Just take an example of Cleartrip.com where in round trip flight search, you will have to select

DepartDate and ReturnDate from date picker. Below is the code to automate same using webdriver in TestNg Framework.

Here I am giving you the complete set of code so that you run it and see what happening. 

import java.util.List;

import org.openqa.selenium.By;

import org.openqa.selenium.WebDriver;

import org.openqa.selenium.WebElement;

import org.openqa.selenium.firefox.FirefoxDriver;

import org.testng.annotations.AfterTest;

import org.testng.annotations.Test;

 

public class roundTripSearch

{

 WebDriver driver= new FirefoxDriver();

                          

       @Test

       public void tc01_RoundTripSearchResult() throws InterruptedException

       {

             

              driver.get("http://www.cleartrip.com/");

              if(driver.findElement(By.id("RoundTrip")).isSelected() == true){}

              else driver.findElement(By.id("RoundTrip")).click();

driver.findElement(By.id("FromTag")).sendKeys("New Delhi, IN - Indira Gandhi Airport (DEL)");

driver.findElement(By.id("ToTag")).sendKeys("Mumbai, IN - Chatrapati Shivaji Airport (BOM)");

             

              driver.findElement(By.id("DepartDate")).click();

              List col1= driver.findElements(By.tagName("td"));

                      for (WebElement box: col1)

                      {           

                           if(box.getText().equals("24"))

                                  {

                                  box.findElement(By.linkText("24")).click();

                                  }

                       }

                      

              driver.findElement(By.id("ReturnDate")).click();

              List col2= driver.findElements(By.tagName("td"));

                     for (WebElement box: col2)

                      {           

                           if(box.getText().equals("27"))

                                  {

                                  box.findElement(By.linkText("27")).click();

                                  }

                                               

                     }

                    

               driver.findElement(By.id("Adults")).sendKeys("2");

               driver.findElement(By.id("Childrens")).sendKeys("1");

               driver.findElement(By.id("Infants")).sendKeys("0");

               driver.findElement(By.id("SearchBtn")).click();

                                    

       }

      

       @AfterTest

              public void closebrowser()

       {

              driver.close();

       }

             

}

If you run this, you will get the error with exception:

FAILED: tc01_RoundTripSearchResult

org.openqa.selenium.StaleElementReferenceException: Element is no longer attached to the DOM

Command duration or timeout: 9 milliseconds

For documentation on this error, please visit: http://seleniumhq.org/exceptions/stale_element_reference.html

Build info: version: '2.53.0', revision: '35ae25b', time: '2016-03-15 16:57:40'

 

This is due to use of java script. When we select first date, it automatically open second calendar and the element is lost in way. Here I fixed this using break statement.  See the code..it works fine.

import java.util.List;

import org.openqa.selenium.By;

import org.openqa.selenium.WebDriver;

import org.openqa.selenium.WebElement;

import org.openqa.selenium.firefox.FirefoxDriver;

import org.testng.annotations.AfterTest;

import org.testng.annotations.Test;

public class roundTripSearch

{

WebDriver driver= new FirefoxDriver();

             

                    

       @Test

       public void tc01_RoundTripSearchResult() throws InterruptedException

       {

             

              driver.get("http://www.cleartrip.com/");

              if(driver.findElement(By.id("RoundTrip")).isSelected() == true){}

              else driver.findElement(By.id("RoundTrip")).click();

              driver.findElement(By.id("FromTag")).sendKeys("New Delhi, IN - Indira Gandhi Airport (DEL)");

              driver.findElement(By.id("ToTag")).sendKeys("Mumbai, IN - Chatrapati Shivaji Airport (BOM)");

             

              driver.findElement(By.id("DepartDate")).click();

              List col1= driver.findElements(By.tagName("td"));

                      for (WebElement box: col1)

                      {           

                           if(box.getText().equals("24"))

                                  {

                                  box.findElement(By.linkText("24")).click();

                                  break;

                                  }

                       }

                      

              driver.findElement(By.id("ReturnDate")).click();

              List col2= driver.findElements(By.tagName("td"));

                     for (WebElement box: col2)

                      {           

                           if(box.getText().equals("27"))

                                  {

                                  box.findElement(By.linkText("27")).click();

                                  break;

                                  }

                                               

                     }

                    

               driver.findElement(By.id("Adults")).sendKeys("2");

               driver.findElement(By.id("Childrens")).sendKeys("1");

               driver.findElement(By.id("Infants")).sendKeys("0");

               driver.findElement(By.id("SearchBtn")).click();

                                    

       }

      

       @AfterTest

              public void closebrowser()

       {

              driver.close();

       }

             

}

Enjoy.