Selenium Webdriver - Unable to locate element

Question

I have a Selenium Webdriver JUnit Java test and I am unable to use locators successfully within a Drupal 8 table (which also has styling). In Firefox I can use Firepath and Xpath checker to determine and check the xpath OK. However when I run the JUnit 4 test it is unable to be located. What was interesting is that the first time I ran this test it worked ok, however many attempts afterwards and it will not run.

I have used xpath etc successfully for many other tests within this web site, but for some reason I cannot get this to work.

Actually the unable to locate element message is for the next command;

driver.findElement(By.id("edit-application-status-1")).click();

however I know it is failing on the previous command (as below) because it never clicks to get to this page.

Failing code;

driver.findElement(By.xpath(".//*[@id='block-ua-theme-content']/div/div/div[2]/table/tbody/tr[1]/td[2]/a")).click();

also tried;

driver.findElement(By.cssSelector("a[href='/application-19']")).click();

I have tried changing to cssSelector with explict wait as below

wait.until(ExpectedConditions.visibilityOfElementLocated(By.cssSelector("a[href='/application-19']")));

scroll into view as below;

WebElement element1 = driver.findElement(By.cssSelector("a[href='/application-19']"));
jse.executeScript("arguments[0].scrollIntoView(true);", element1);

Answer 1

//Click on first item in list tr[1]
        System.out.println("Before");
        List<WebElement> tableElements = driver.findElements(By.xpath(".//[@id='block-ua-theme-content']/div/div/div[2]/table/tbody/tr[1]"));

        for(WebElement item : tableElements){

            if(item.getText().equals("Abhimanyujeet")){

                WebElement newItem =  driver.findElement(By.xpath("/a"));
                System.out.println("tableElements" + tableElements);
                System.out.println("item" + item);

                newItem.click();

            }
        }
        System.out.println("After");

        driver.findElement(By.id("edit-application-status-1")).click();

Console;

Before

tableElements[EyesRemoteWebElement:[[FirefoxDriver: firefox on XP (acecd5e9-    e491-4afd-9f78-82351e50b9e4)] -> xpath: .//*[@id='block-ua-theme-content']    /div/div/div[2]/table/tbody/tr[1]]]

itemEyesRemoteWebElement:[[FirefoxDriver: firefox on XP (acecd5e9-e491-4afd- 9f78-82351e50b9e4)] -> xpath: .//*[@id='block-ua-theme-content']/div/div/div[2]/table/tbody/tr[1]]

After

Trace;

org.openqa.selenium.NoSuchElementException: Unable to locate element: #edit\-application\-status\-1

Answer 2

Handling Web table could be tricky so it's better to traverse all the elements of WebTable one by one ; then check if your element has been found and then trigger your action:

List<WebElement> tableElements = driver.findElements(By.xpath(".//*[@id='block-ua-theme-content']/div/div/div[2]/table/tbody/tr[1]/td"));


        for(WebElement item : tableElements){

        System.out.println("item text : " + item.getText());

            if(item.getText().equals("Text of your  <a> tag")){

                 WebElement newItem =  item.findElement(By.tagName("a"));

                newItem.click();

            }
        }