selenium.ElementNotVisibleException: Element is not currently visible JAVA

Question

I am working on selenium, while running Java code I tried to CLICK a menu from the web page but encounter error of selenium.ElementNotVisibleException: Element is not currently visible Kindly advise on this matters . Thanks you

HTML code for text field :

<li onclick="goin('pages/AbcProxy/proxyGroupList.do')>
 <a href="javascript::">TESTABC</a>

JAVA code:

WebdriverWait wait = new WebDriverWait(driver,50);
wait until(ExpectedConditions.presenceOfElementLocated(By.xpath("/html/body/div/div/ul/li[12]/a")));

Answer 1

presenceOfElementLocated checks if the element exists in the DOM. To check if the element is visible use visibilityOfElementLocated

WebdriverWait wait = new WebDriverWait(driver,50);
WebElement element = wait.until(ExpectedConditions.visibilityOfElementLocated(By.xpath("/html/body/div/div/ul/li[12]/a")));
element.click();

• Jayden Ng: Hi , if i use the method of visibilityOfElementLocated does it effect unable to onclick this element ?
• Guy: @JaydenNg this will return the element it was waiting for. If the element is visible it will get into element in my example. You can use it to send the click.

Answer 2

It might be that your xpath is to a different a element that is invisible (css display none or such).

It would be better to use some id first (maybe for the parent ul?) and then a relative xpath from there, full xpaths from root are not recommended as it makes the test very brittle

• Jayden Ng: Hi @the-noob , do you mind show some example , as im stuck on this matters. Thanks you
• the-noob: For that I would need a bit more html, is there an id attribute for any of the parents of a ?