Verify that an element exist in Selenium 2 or not

Question

In Selenium 2, I want to ensure that an element present on the page, that the driver has loaded does not exist.

Below is my code:

    WebElement deleteLink = null;
    try {
        deleteLink = driver.findElement(By.className("commentEdit"));
    } catch (NoSuchElementException e) {

    }
    assertTrue(deleteLink != null);

Is there a more elegant way that basically verifies to assert that NoSuchElementException was thrown?

Answer 1

If you are testing using JUnit and that is the only thing you are testing you could make the test expect an exception using

@Test (expected=NoSuchElementException.class)
public void someTest() {
    driver.findElement(By.className("commentEdit"));
}

Or you could use the findElements method that returns a list of elements or an empty list if none are found (does not throw NoSuchElementException):

List<WebElement> deleteLinks = driver.findElements(By.className("commentEdit"));
assertTrue(deleteLinks.isEmpty());

or

 assertTrue(driver.findElements(By.className("commentEdit")).isEmpty());