Golang - Selenium - check if the element disappears - selenium

Question

I'm trying to switch from Python to GO and faced with difficulties of detecting when an element disappears. The selenium.WebDriver has FindElement, which returns an error when an element couldn't be found and, at the same time, can return a connection error. Is it a legit way just to check the text of the error? Or is there any better way to find out when the element becomes invisible/disappears from the page?

Answer 1

To check if an element has disappeared from a web page in Go using Selenium, you can use a loop with a timeout to periodically check if the element is still present on the page. Here's an example:
package main
import (
"time"
"github.com/tebeka/selenium"
)
func main() {
// Connect to a running instance of Selenium WebDriver
webDriver, err := selenium.NewRemote(selenium.Capabilities{
"browserName": "chrome",
}, "http://localhost:4444/wd/hub")
if err != nil {
println(err)
return
}
defer webDriver.Quit()
// Load a webpage
webDriver.Get("https://www.example.com")
// Find the element you want to check for
element, err := webDriver.FindElement(selenium.ByID, "element_id")
if err != nil {
println("Element not found")
return
}
// Use a loop with a timeout to check if the element is still present
timeout := time.After(5 * time.Second)
for {
select {
case <-timeout:
println("Timeout reached, element may have disappeared")
return
default:
_, err := webDriver.FindElement(selenium.ByID, "element_id")
if err != nil {
println("Element has disappeared")
return
}
time.Sleep(500 * time.Millisecond)
}
}
}
In this way, the function webDriver.FindElement is used in a loop with a timeout of 5 seconds. The timeout channel is used to stop the loop after 5 seconds if the element has not disappeared. If the element disappears, webDriver.FindElement will return an error, and the loop will stop. The time.Sleep function is used to wait between checks to avoid excessive CPU usage. You can adjust the sleep time as needed.