StableElementReferenceException: Element not found in the cache - perhaps the page has changed since it was looked up

Question

My code is like as following, the code is to get the elements set via xpath, and generate a list<String> with the texts of each element in the elements set. But it always throws exception during the process of adding each element's text to the new List<String>.

protected List<String> getHeaders(String path){
    List<String> headers = new ArrayList<String>();
    int count = 0;
    List<WebElement> elements = findAllByXpath(path);
    LOG.info("The length is : " + String.valueOf(elements.size()));

    for (WebElement c: elements) {
        LOG.info("->> " + String.valueOf(count));
        count++;
        headers.add(c.getText());
    }
    return headers;
}

The result is:

INFO com.xxx.test - The length is: 13
INFO com.xxx.test ->> 0
INFO com.xxx.test ->> 1
INFO com.xxx.test ->> 2
INFO com.xxx.test ->> 3
INFO com.xxx.test ->> 4
INFO com.xxx.test ->> 5

com.xxx.test -> getHeaders FAILED org.openqa.selenium.StableElementReferenceException:Element not found in the cache - perhaps the page has changed since it was looked up

Can someone help in this case? Thanks!

Answer 1

I see 3 ways to handle your issue.

The first solution and probably the most reliable would be to find the elements once the page has reached a stable state. It could be done either by waiting for the presence of an element or by waiting for the count of elements.

A second solution would be to list again the elements when StableElementReferenceException is raised :

List<String> headers = new ArrayList<String>();
List<WebElement> elements = findAllByXpath(path);
for(int i = 0; i < elements.size(); ) {
  try {
    headers.add(elements.get(i).getText());
    i++;
  } catch (StableElementReferenceException ex) {
    elements = findAllByXpath(path);
  }
}
return headers;

And a third solution would be to get the text for all the elements with a piece of Javascript:

List<WebElement> elements = findAllByXpath(path);

ArrayList headers = (ArrayList)((JavascriptExecutor)driver).executeScript(
    "var arr = [], elements = arguments[0];" +
    "for(var i=0; i<elements.length; i++)" +
    "  arr.push(elements[i].textContent);" +
    "return arr;", elements);

return headers;