Waiting and Conditional Statements in Selenium WebDriver

Question: How can I pause Selenium WebDriver execution for milliseconds in Python?

Answer:

While the time.sleep() function can be used to suspend execution for a specified number of seconds, it's generally not recommended in Selenium WebDriver automation.

Using Selenium's WebDriverWait

Instead, Selenium provides the WebDriverWait class in conjunction with expected conditions to validate an element's state. Here are the common expected conditions:

1. Presence of Element Located: Checks if an element is present on the DOM.
2. Visibility of Element Located: Checks if an element is visible and has a height and width greater than 0.
3. Element to be Clickable: Checks if an element is visible, enabled, and interactable.

Example:

from selenium import webdriver
from selenium.webdriver.support.ui import WebDriverWait
from selenium.webdriver.support import expected_conditions as EC

driver = webdriver.Chrome()
wait = WebDriverWait(driver, 10) # Timeout after 10 seconds

# Wait until an element is clickable
element = wait.until(EC.element_to_be_clickable((By.ID, "some_button")))
element.click()

This method is preferred over time.sleep() as it avoids unnecessary waiting and checks for the element's desired state before proceeding, improving the efficiency of your tests.

References:

For more information, refer to:

• WebDriverWait not working as expected: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/37372143/webdriverwait-not-working-as-expected