How to check if an element doesnt exist selenium nodejs

Question

I want to check if an element exists on the page(which shouldnt) and continue if it doesnt.

driver.wait(function() {   
        fieldBool = driver.isElementPresent(webdriver.By.id("someId"));
        return fieldBool;
}, timeout).then(function(b) {
        assert.equal(false, b, "message");    
});

I want fieldBool to be false, but the test stops(timeout or no such element exists).

Answer 1

The WebDriver will throw an error when an element does not exist. So, we have to check for the NoSuchElementError.

We can check that an element does not exist by making use of the optional callbacks for the .findElement promise driver.findElement(...).then(successCallback,errorCallback) which will get called as the parameter names imply.

The following is how I've been doing it:

var existed = await driver.findElement(webdriver.By.id("someId")).then(function() {
    return true;//it was found
}, function(err) {
    if (err instanceof webdriver.error.NoSuchElementError) {
        return false;//element did not exist
    } else {
        webdriver.promise.rejected(err);//some other error...
    }
});
assert.equal(existed,false,"message");

Answer 2

driver.findElements(webdriver.By.id('someId')).then((elements)=>{
   if(elements.length > 0){
     throw new Error('The Element was found!');
   } else {
     return true;
   }
});

This works by finding all of the elements that match the id, css, name etc, and making sure that the result that comes back (which would be an array of elements) has a length of 0 - meaning no elements were found with that css/id/name etc on the page.