Avoiding waiting for elements to render when Watir crawling?

Question

I am using Watir, Selenium ChromeDriver to run a crawling script in my Rails app. Some of the form elements that I need to complete are revealed conditionally, for example based upon the selection of checkboxes, and some of these conditionally revealed elements render on a fade in, which takes a short while to appear on page.

Currently I'm using sleep to ensure that the element is present by the time Watir tried to manipulate it. This results in a cumulative fair delay in completing the crawl operation which I would like to avoid. What would be the best way for me to reduce these waiting times without erroring out the form?

Example code from the crawling script:

def complete_form_1
        @browser.text_field(name: 'ctl$Years').set '5'
        @browser.text_field(name: 'ctl$CompanyNumber').set '08216084'
        @browser.select_list(:name, "ctl&IndType").select_value("02")
        @browser.radio(:id => "ctl_CurrentIns").set
        sleep 0.25
        @browser.checkbox(name: "ctl$chkLf").set
        sleep 0.25
        # @browser.checkbox(name: "ctl$chkLf").clear
        # sleep 1
        # @browser.checkbox(name: "ctl$chkLf").set
        # sleep 1
        @browser.select_list(:name, "ctl$LfCar").select_value("14")
end

I have just found this SO post; How do I use Watir::Waiter::wait_until to force Chrome to wait?

and am investigating this Watir Module: http://www.rubydoc.info/gems/watir-webdriver/Watir/Wait

Any other thoughts or suggestions welcome.

jbk jbk · Accepted Answer · 2017-07-24T13:14:40

From versions >6 Watir already waits for the element to be present, version <6 would have needed to use the below:

@browser.checkbox(name: "ctl$chkLf").wait_until_present.set

As defined in the Watir docs here.

I was lead to this from this SO post here.

Avoiding waiting for elements to render when Watir crawling?

1 Answers