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Why Thread.sleep(200000) is not waiting my script up to that amount of time?)

Myy application is bit slow during that step and I need to wait for all elements to be loaded for 2 minutes so I have given Thread.sleep(200000) but the script is not waiting that long and it is giving me
UnreachableBrowserException and shows Error Connecting with remote browser. It may have died.
I am using Selenium 4 alpha version and ChromeDriver also 4 version. Please help. Demo Code below:
#And("user clicks on Go button and waits for the members to display")
public void user_clicks_on_go_andwaits()
{
memberPage.clickGo();
Thread.sleep(200000);
// after this step a list of element displays and I need to select one in the below step
}
#And("user selects {int} member")
public void select_member(int memberId)
{
memberPage.selectMember(memberId);
//selectMember method is defined in the page object.
}

Dont use thred in selenium automation (That is not good practice) Please use webdriver wait in selenium
Thread sleep force your automation program
create method for wait and use anywhere in your program
**//Following code is method of wait**
private static WebElement waitForElement(By locator,int timeout)
{
WebElement element=new WebDriverWait(driver,timeout).until(ExpectedConditions.presenceOfElementLocated(locator));
return element;
}
//If you want wait for particular element you can use that wait method which you are written in program
**waitForElement(By.id(""),20);**
//Here 20 is in milliseconds and you can use any web element to wait with any locators

How can I wait for a page loader, which appears and disappears based on API call, to disappear before performing action on element

As the title states, I am trying to perform an action (i.e., sendkeys or click etc.) on an element but the loader (which has ID) is making the action inconsistent.
I have tried quite a few different methods, now I am onto a gimmicky method of sorts with using thread sleep which works semi-consistently, but still gets false-positives to move forward once in a while which results in test failure.
The loader (id="spinner") disappears from the page after an API call completes (sending a signal to script that it is good to go forward), but upon the start of the next call, the loader comes back, and then disappears upon completion for (currently) 3 API calls. I would like to devise a way for this to work regardless of how many calls are implemented.
public void Loader()
{
WebDriverWait wait=new WebDriverWait(driver,50);
WebElement CPloader = driver.findElement(By.id("spinner"));
boolean test = wait.until(ExpectedConditions.invisibilityOfElementLocated(By.id("spinner")));
if(test==false) {
wait.until(ExpectedConditions.invisibilityOfElementLocated(By.id("spinner")));
wait.until(ExpectedConditions.invisibilityOf(CPloader));
threadsleep(2000);
wait.until(ExpectedConditions.invisibilityOfElementLocated(By.id("spinner")));
wait.until(ExpectedConditions.invisibilityOf(CPloader));
threadsleep(2000);
wait.until(ExpectedConditions.invisibilityOfElementLocated(By.id("spinner")));
wait.until(ExpectedConditions.invisibilityOf(CPloader));
}
}
In the test script code, I am usually putting loader method, threadsleep, loader method in an attempt to get it to hold off for long enough but I know this isn't proper... example below:
Util.Loader();
Util.threadsleep(2000);
Util.Loader();
//click element or send keys etc
I am imagining this to be a loop of sorts with an invisibility wait but can't seem to figure it out.
Any pointers in the right direction would be of great help.

I would approach this by waiting for the loader to appear then disappear... and do this in a loop. Once the loader stops appearing, the wait will throw a TimeoutException. Catch that with a try-catch and break out of the loop. You may need to tweak the 10s wait up or down depending on how much time generally passes between loading spinners.
public static void Loader()
{
By loader = By.id("spinner");
WebDriverWait wait = new WebDriverWait(driver, 10);
while (true)
{
try
{
wait.until(ExpectedConditions.visibilityOfElementLocated(loader));
wait.until(ExpectedConditions.invisibilityOfElementLocated(loader));
}
catch (Exception e)
{
break;
}
}
}

AS you mentioned the loader (which has ID) is making the action inconsistently so instead of invoking invisibilityOfElementLocated() method for the loader you can invoke elementToBeClickable() method for the desired element for which you intent to invoke click() or sendKeys() as follows :
Using cssSelector and click :
new WebDriverWait(driver, 20).until(ExpectedConditions.elementToBeClickable(By.cssSelector("cssSelector_of_element_to_interact"))).click();
Using xpath and sendKeys :
new WebDriverWait(driver, 30).until(ExpectedConditions.elementToBeClickable(By.xpath("xpath_of_element_to_interact']"))).sendKeys("Test");

Selenium Testing: Programming a more robust test

I am attempting to automate a task involving a JavaServer Page using the Selenium Webdriver. I have built a test that works about 90% of the time, meaning that the Webdriver makes it through all the tasks without any errors. During the test the browser executes the actions below:
opens a page
clicks on a link and switches windows
closes the original window
logs into a system
switches frames
clicks a link
fills out a form
submits the form
...more similar tasks
Unfortunatly, some of the time the Webdriver will randomly fail on one of the steps. This is because it could not find something, for example 'no frame found', 'unable to find element with link text...' and other similar errors. I am not sure why this happens sometimes and it appears to happen randomly at different stages in the test. I searched around for a solution and the best I could do was slow down the Webdriver with thread.sleep at various stages in the program. This seems like a very haphazard way to solve the problem to me and I am not even sure the problem is that the driver is moving too quickly. Even if I slow it down half a second I still sometimes get errors. I am a new user of Selenium and I do not know if this is usually a problem. Does anyone have a better way to address this problem? Am I overlooking something simple?

I did the same initially using thread sleep to develop my scripts. However, even though the scripts work while development, but it will be unrealiable on a production run as it fail inconsistently --which adds to the frustration. This is because thread sleep utilizes fixed waiting time and if elements do not get attached in time, it will fail the tests. singe31 has given a valid solution. Another solution would be by using fluentWait:
public void fluentWait(final By by)
{
FluentWait<WebDriver> wait = new FluentWait<WebDriver>(driver)
.withTimeout(60, TimeUnit.SECONDS)
.pollingEvery(5, TimeUnit.SECONDS)
.ignoring(NoSuchElementException.class);
WebElement foo = wait.until(new Function<WebDriver, WebElement>() {
public WebElement apply(WebDriver driver) {
return driver.findElement(by);
}
});
}
Here, the Selenium Webdriver will wait for at least 60 seconds to find an element until it throws of an TimeOutException. Otherwise, it will poll the DOM to find the element every 5 seconds and if the element is not found "NoSuchElementException" exception will be ignored.
Another problem which you are bound to face is, StaleStateReference or NoSuchElementException. You can check this link for solving that issue.
Hope it helps.

It's a common issue, instead of using Thread.sleep(duration) you should better create some utility method like
public WebElement waitForElementPresent(By by, int timeout) {
WebDriverWait wait = new WebDriverWait(driver, timeout);
WebElement element = null;
try {
element = wait.until(ExpectedConditions.presenceOfElementLocated(by));
} catch (TimeoutException e) {
e.printStackTrace();
}
return element;
}
This way if the element is already there you won't wait, and if it's loading it will wait until it finds it or until the timeout is triggered

Webdriver, detect DOM changing and wait for it

I am using Webdriver in Java and I encountered an issue repeatedly that I can't find a proper solution yet.
It is to do with doing actions on a page that will cause this page DOM to change (for example, Javascript lightbox), then my JUnit test is expecting new elements after the DOM change but my test is getting the old DOM element.
To give you an example, I have a scenario as below.
First of all click “Add item” button in the below image and the light box appears:
Then fill in all the item details and click "Add & Close". You will see the screen below:
Notice that now there is an info message Your item ... has been added.
Now I put keywords in the Search text box and hit enter and the info message will be changed to below:
In my JUnit test, the flow is like below:
....
itemDetailsPage.clickAddAndClose();
itemDetailsPage.searchItemBy("Electricity");
assertEquals("Your search for 'electricity' returned 2 results.",
itemDetailsPage.getInfoMsg());
....
Now this test is not very robust, because if the network is slow, most of the times, getInfoMsg() will return the previous info message Your item ... has been added instead of the latest info message, which causes the test to fail. Just a side note that these two info message have share the same html element id.
The solution I am trying to implement here are:
add explicit wait in clickAddAndClose()
So it looks something like:
public void clickAddAndClose() {
...
clickWhenReady(driver, By.id(addAndCloseButtonId));
...
waitForElementByLocator(driver,By.id(itemInfoMsgId),10);
}
The second wait proves to be useless because, itemInfoMsgId already exist when the user added the item from the add item lightbox.
add waitForPageLoaded() method at the end of clickAddAndClose() to try to wait for the page to finish reloading. The generic method for waitForPageLoaded() below:
public void waitForPageLoaded(WebDriver driver) {
ExpectedCondition<Boolean> expectation = new ExpectedCondition<Boolean>() {
public Boolean apply(WebDriver driver) {
return ((JavascriptExecutor) driver).executeScript(
"return document.readyState").equals("complete");
}
};
Wait<WebDriver> wait = new WebDriverWait(driver, 30);
try {
wait.until(expectation);
} catch (Throwable error) {
assertFalse("Timeout waiting for Page Load Request to complete.",
true);
}
}
I am expect at the end of clickAddAndClose(), it will see this page is still being updated so it will wait until the info message has been updated. But this does not seem to work either.
That leaves me to the last choice will is to add a thread sleep at the end of clickAddAndClose(). I want to avoid using it.
Is there a generic way of solving this kind of problem? How do I detect that the page DOM is still changing and tell Webdriver to wait until it finishes refreshing?

Waiting for the page to be loaded won't work if (as it seems to be the case) your page is being modified by AJAX operations.
Instead of waiting for the page to load, wait for the condition you are testing to become true. This way, you give the AJAX operation time to execute and if your there is a problem you will get an error when the time out occurs.
I usually use the Python bindings for Selenium and it has been quite a while since I wrote Java code but I believe it would look something like this, with X being replaced with a type appropriate for the itemDetailsPage object:
new FluentWait<X>(itemDetailsPage)
.until(new Function<X, Boolean>() {
public Boolean apply(X itemDetailsPage) {
return "Your search for 'electricity' returned 2 results." == itemDetailsPage.getInfoMsg();
};
});

Seems like you need to wait until ajax has finished its job. In a similar situation I've used a method similar to waitForJQueryProcessing described here. Take a look, it might help.

Selenium : Handling Loading screens obscuring the web elements. (Java)

I'm writing an automated test case for a web page. Here's my scenario.
I have to click and type on various web elements in an html form. But, sometimes while typing on a text field, an ajax loading image appears , fogging all elements i want to interact with. So, I'm using web-driver wait before clicking on the actual elements like below,
WebdriverWait innerwait=new WebDriverWait(driver,30);
innerwait.until(ExpectedConditions.elementToBeClickable(By.xpath(fieldID)));
driver.findelement(By.xpath(fieldID)).click();
But the wait function returns the element even if it is fogged by another image and is not clickable. But the click() throws an exception as
Element is not clickable at point (586.5, 278).
Other element would receive the click: <div>Loading image</div>
Do I have to check every time if the loading image appeared before interacting with any elements?.(I can't predict when the loading image will appear and fog all elements.)
Is there any efficient way to handle this?
Currently I'm using the following function to wait till the loading image disappears,
public void wait_for_ajax_loading() throws Exception
{
try{
Thread.sleep(2000);
if(selenium.isElementPresent("id=loadingPanel"))
while(selenium.isElementPresent("id=loadingPanel")&&selenium.isVisible("id=loadingPanel"))//wait till the loading screen disappears
{
Thread.sleep(2000);
System.out.println("Loading....");
}}
catch(Exception e){
Logger.logPrint("Exception in wait_for_ajax_loading() "+e);
Logger.failedReport(report, e);
driver.quit();
System.exit(0);
}
}
But I don't know exactly when to call the above function, calling it at a wrong time will fail. Is there any efficient way to check if an element is actually clickable? or the loading image is present?
Thanks..

Given the circumstances that you describe, you are forced to verify one of two conditions:
Is the element that you want to click clickable?
Is the reason that blocks the clicks still present?
Normally, if the WebDriver is able to find the element and it is visible, then it is clickable too. Knowing the posible reasons that might block it, I would rather choose to verify those reasons. Besides, it would be more expressive in the test code: you clearly see what you are waiting for, what you are checking before clicking the element, instead of checking the "clickability" with no visible reason for it. I think it gives one (who reads the test) a better understanding of what is (or could be) actually going on.
Try using this method to check that the loading image is not present:
// suppose this is your WebDriver instance
WebDriver yourDriver = new RemoteWebDriver(your_hub_url, your_desired_capabilities);
......
// elementId would be 'loadingPanel'
boolean isElementNotDisplayed(final String elementId, final int timeoutInSeconds) {
try {
ExpectedCondition condition = new ExpectedCondition<Boolean>() {
#Override
public Boolean apply(final WebDriver webDriver) {
WebElement element = webDriver.findElement(By.id(elementId));
return !element.isDisplayed();
}
};
Wait w = new WebDriverWait(yourDriver, timeoutInSeconds);
w.until(condition);
} catch (Exception ex) {
// if it gets here it is because the element is still displayed after timeoutInSeconds
// insert code most suitable for you
}
return true;
}
Perhaps you will have to adjust it a bit to your code (e.g. finding the element once when the page loads and only checking if it is displayed).
If you are not sure when exactly the loading image comes up (though I suppose you do), you should call this method before every click on elements that would become "unclickable" due to the loading image. If the loading image is present, the method will return true as soon as it disappears; if it doesn't disappear within 'timeoutInSeconds' amount of time, the method will do what you choose (e.g. throw an exception with specific message).
You could wrap it together like:
void clickSkippingLoadingPanel(final WebElement elementToClick) {
if (isElementNotDisplayed('loadingPanel', 10)) {
elementToClick.click();
}
}
Hope it helps.