While executing Selenium Web driver script getting error " Element is not currently visible and so may not be interacted with"

Question

org.openqa.selenium.ElementNotVisibleException: Element is not currently visible and so may not be interacted with
Command duration or timeout: 21 milliseconds
Build info: version: '2.32.0', revision: '6c40c18', time: '2013-04-09 17:22:56'
System info: os.name: 'Windows 8', os.arch: 'amd64', os.version: '6.2', java.version: '1.7.0_25'
Session ID: 16492097-714b-42c4-b9dc-2c3979db180f
Driver info: org.openqa.selenium.firefox.FirefoxDriver
Capabilities [{platform=XP, databaseEnabled=true, cssSelectorsEnabled=true, javascriptEnabled=true, acceptSslCerts=true, handlesAlerts=true, browserName=firefox, browserConnectionEnabled=true, nativeEvents=true, webStorageEnabled=true, rotatable=false, locationContextEnabled=true, applicationCacheEnabled=true, takesScreenshot=true, version=22.0}]

The results of the executed scripts are not consistent. Sometimes it passes, and sometime it throws the exception mentioned above.

Answer 1

The script result is not same because the element might talking different amount of time for appear on page.

Using sleep can solve the problem but that is not good practice as you may have to adjust/increase the value if test case failed even after giving sleep.

Better use wait for element functionality.

Refer document @ "http://docs.seleniumhq.org/docs/04_webdriver_advanced.jsp" for details

Answer 2

yes You need to use a conditional wait , so that your code will wait until it locates the element.

For Example:If you are using web-driver

wait.until(ExpectedConditions.visibilityOfElementLocated(By.id("username")));