CODEWITHSUNDEEP
javaseleniumwebdriver
Arun Gupta
Arun Gupta

Reputation: 25

Getting Stale Element Reference Exception while accessing the element from a list

Below is the code which I am trying to get to work.

//Method to fetch all links from the sitemap container

public void GetAllLinks() {

        WebElement pointer = LinksContainer;
        String url = "";
        List <WebElement> allURLs = pointer.findElements(By.tagName("a"));
        System.out.println("Total links on the page: "+ allURLs.size());

        for (int i=0; i<allURLs.size(); i++) {
            
            WebElement link = allURLs.get(i);
            url = link.getAttribute("href");
            
            OpenAllLinks(url);
        }
    }
    
    
    //Method to hit all the fetched URLs
    
    public void OpenAllLinks(String linkURL) {
        
        driver.get(linkURL);
}

I am fetching all the anchor elements from a sitemap page and then putting all those elements into a list. Then, I am getting the URLs from all those elements using the getAttribute(href). The code is working fine till here.

However, after that I am taking these URLs as arguments and passing into the method OpenAllLinks() to open all these URLs one by one using driver.get(). The code works till the first link but as soon as the first page is loaded, it gives me the stale element exception.

Upvotes: 1

Views: 374

Answers (1)

Prophet
Prophet

Reputation: 33361

At the moment you are leaving the page where all these links are appearing all the web elements in allURLs list becoming stale elements.
What you can do is first to extract and save in a list all the links, not the web elements, and after that iterate with loop opening all these links.
Like this:

public void GetAllLinks() {

    WebElement pointer = LinksContainer;
    String url = "";
    List <WebElement> allURLs = pointer.findElements(By.tagName("a"));
    System.out.println("Total links on the page: "+ allURLs.size());
    List<String>links = new ArrayList<>();

    for (int i=0; i<allURLs.size(); i++) {
            
        WebElement link = allURLs.get(i);
        url = link.getAttribute("href");
        links.add(url);    
    }

    for (int i=0; i<links.size(); i++) {
            
        OpenLink(links.get(i));
    }
}
    
    
//Method to open the fetched URLs
    
public void OpenLink(String linkURL) {        
    driver.get(linkURL);
}

Upvotes: 1

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