How to fetch all links and click those links one by one using Selenium WebDriver

java, selenium-webdriver, testng

Solution

There is no such a good idea to have following scenario :

for (WebElement element : webDriver.findElements(locator.getBy())){
  element.click();
}

Why? Because there is no guarantee that the `element.click();` will have no effect on other found elements, so the `DOM` may be changed, so hence the `StaleElementReferenceException`.

It is better to use the following scenario :

int numberOfElementsFound = getNumberOfElementsFound(locator);
for (int pos = 0; pos < numberOfElementsFound; pos++) {
  getElementWithIndex(locator, pos).click();
}

This is better because you will always take the `WebElement` refreshed, even the previous click had some effects on it.

EDIT : Example added

  public int getNumberOfElementsFound(By by) {
    return webDriver.findElements(by).size();
  }

  public WebElement getElementWithIndex(By by, int pos) {
    return webDriver.findElements(by).get(pos);
  }

Hope to be enough.

Problem

I am using Selenium WebDriver with java. I am fetching all links from webpage and trying to click each link one by one. I am getting below error: error org.openqa.selenium.StaleElementReferenceException: Element not found in the cache - perhaps the page has changed since it was looked up Command duration or timeout: 30.01 seconds For documentation on this error, please visit: http://seleniumhq.org/exceptions/stale_element_reference.html Build info: version: '2.25.0', revision: '17482', time: '2012-07-18 21:09:54' and here is my code : ``` public void getLinks()throws Exception{ try { List<WebElement> links = driver.findElements(By.tagName("a")); int linkcount = links.size(); System.out.println(links.size()); for (WebElement myElement : links){ String link = myElement.getText(); System.out.println(link); System.out.println(myElement); if (link !=""){ myElement.click(); Thread.sleep(2000); System.out.println("third"); } //Thread.sleep(5000); } }catch (Exception e){ System.out.println("error "+e); } } ``` actually, it's displaying in output [[FirefoxDriver: firefox on XP (ce0da229-f77b-4fb8-b017-df517845fa78)] -> tag name: a] as link, I want to eliminate these form result.

Original source