Wait Until One Element in List Disappears Using Selenium

Описание: Learn how to effectively wait for a row in a list to disappear in Selenium without using sleep functions. This guide provides clear solutions for handling elements in a dynamically changing web application.
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This video is based on the question https://stackoverflow.com/q/64681961/ asked by the user 'Silkking' ( https://stackoverflow.com/u/6533290/ ) and on the answer https://stackoverflow.com/a/64682115/ provided by the user 'JaSON' ( https://stackoverflow.com/u/10682289/ ) at 'Stack Overflow' website. Thanks to these great users and Stackexchange community for their contributions.

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How to Wait Until One Element in a List Disappears Using Selenium

When working with dynamic web applications, ensuring that your automation scripts are reliable can be quite challenging. A common scenario is dealing with lists that have an interactive element—like checkboxes—that can hide or remove rows from the display. If you're using Selenium and need to wait until a specific row disappears after unchecking its checkbox, this post is for you. We will walk through a solution without resorting to time.sleep(2), which is not a best practice for waiting in Selenium.

The Problem

Imagine you have a table where each row has a checkbox. When you uncheck a checkbox, the corresponding row hides from view. Since you can't assign unique IDs to each row (as they all share the same class), using standard waiting functions might not work for you. Instead, you need to implement a method to wait until the total count of rows decreases by one.

The Solution

To effectively wait until one element disappears from the list, you can use Selenium's WebDriverWait along with a lambda function. Here’s how to implement this approach step-by-step.

Step 1: Set Up Your WebDriverWait

You will first need to import WebDriverWait from selenium.webdriver.support.ui.

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Step 2: Capture the Initial List Count

Before you change the state of your table (by unchecking the checkbox), you should capture the initial count of rows.

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Step 3: Wait Until the Row Disappears

Now, implement the WebDriverWait to wait until the row count decreases by one. The following code snippet accomplishes this:

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Explanation: This line will wait up to 10 seconds for the condition to be satisfied: it will check whether the current count of rows is equal to the initial count minus one. If the condition is satisfied, the script will proceed; if not, it will keep checking until the timeout.

Step 4: Handling Hidden Rows

In some situations, rather than being removed from the DOM, rows may simply be hidden. If that’s the case, you can adjust the XPath to only account for visible rows. Here’s how you can do that:

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Using not(@ hidden) will help you filter out any rows that are not currently visible on the screen.

Conclusion

Implementing dynamic waits in Selenium is critical for building robust automation scripts. By counting rows and using the built-in WebDriverWait, you can easily manage cases where elements disappear or are hidden without relying on arbitrary sleep durations. This approach ensures that your script responds to the actual state of the web application—leading to more stable test execution.

Now, the next time you need to wait for a row to disappear in your Selenium application, you can use the methods described above, leading to more efficient and effective automation.