CODEWITHSUNDEEP
rubycapybara
Gerold Astor
Gerold Astor

Reputation: 199

Ruby Capybara Element not found error handling

internet.find(:xpath, '/html/body/div[1]/div[10]/div[2]/div[2]/div[1]/div[1]/div[1]/div[5]/div/div[2]/a').text

I am looping through a series of pages and sometimes this xpath will not be available. How do I continue to the next url instead of throwing an error and stopping the program? Thanks.

Upvotes: 2

Views: 313

Answers (2)

Alex Pahom
Alex Pahom

Reputation: 11

As an alternative to accepted answer you could consider #first method that accepts count argument as the number of expected matches or null to allow empty results as well

internet.first(:xpath, ..., count: nil)&.text

That returns element's text if one's found and nil otherwise. And there's no need to ignore rescued exception

See Capybara docs

Upvotes: 1

Thomas Walpole
Thomas Walpole

Reputation: 49890

First, stop using xpaths like that - they're going to be ultra-fragile and horrendous to read. Without seeing the HTML I can't give you a better one - but at least part way along there has to be an element with an id you can target instead.

Next, you could catch the exception returned from find and ignore it or better yet you could check if page has the element first

if internet.has_xpath?(...)
  internet.find(:xpath, ...).text
   ...
else
   ... whatever you want to do when it's not on the page
end

Upvotes: 2

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