Implicit Wait in Selenium

Introduction

Web application testing can be automated with the Selenium open-source testing tool. Due to its strong capabilities, including cross-browser testing, task automation for repetitive tasks, and flexibility, it is widely used. However, Selenium WebDriver faces a few difficulties when it comes to testing web applications. Dealing with dynamic items that take a while to load or show on the page is one of the biggest issues. Dealing with AJAX requests that can dynamically update the page's content is another difficulty. There are two types of waits, explicit and implicit wait in Selenium.

Why Do We Need Waits In Selenium?

When a test script runs, a series of operations that involve web elements are carried out. The speed at which these activities are carried out, however, is quicker than the speed at which site elements respond. In other words, the test script interacts with web items immediately as they load or appear on the page. The test script might consequently be unable to find the web elements and produce false-positive findings. Selenium offers waits to prevent such problems.

Selenium uses waits as a technique to temporarily halt the test script's execution while waiting for the web element to load, become visible, or be enabled on the page. Waits to make ensuring that a test script only interacts with a web element when it is prepared, minimizing the possibility of a test script failure brought on by an inaccurate element placement. AJAX requests, page loading, and other issues that could affect the test execution can be handled by testers with the use of waits. Implicit wait in Selenium is one of the waits that can be used to achieve this task.

Selenium Web Driver Waits

Selenium waits are an essential tool for automation testing in Selenium. They help ensure that the test scripts are reliable and produce accurate results by waiting for specific conditions to be met before proceeding. There are two types of waits in Selenium.

Implicit Wait

An implicit wait in Selenium is a way to tell Selenium to wait for a specific amount of time before throwing a NoSuchElementException. The implicit wait in Selenium is applied globally to all elements in the test script. If the script tries to interact with an element that has not loaded yet, Selenium waits for the implicit wait in Selenium time before throwing a NoSuchElementException.

Explicit Wait

An explicit wait in Selenium is a way to tell Selenium to wait for a specific condition to be met before proceeding to the next step in the test case. The explicit wait is applied to a specific element or a group of elements in the test script.

Explicit waits in Selenium are implemented using the WebDriverWait class, which provides a set of expected conditions that can be used to wait for a specific condition to be met before proceeding to the next step in the test case. To implement an explicit wait in Selenium, we create an instance of the WebDriverWait class and pass it to the driver instance and a timeout value of 10 seconds.

Implicit Wait in Selenium

An implicit wait in Selenium is a global wait that instructs the WebDriver to hold off on throwing an exception for a specific period. The test script waits for a specific period before executing the following command since this wait time is applied to all succeeding commands.

When dealing with dynamic websites that might take some time to load or when interacting with elements that might not be immediately available, implicit waits in Selenium are helpful. We can make sure that the test script waits for a specific period before attempting to interact with the web page or element by implementing a global implicit wait.

Implicit Wait Syntax

To implement an implicit wait in Selenium, we use the implicitly_wait() method of the WebDriver instance. This method takes a single argument, which is the amount of time to wait in seconds.

Here's an example code snippet that demonstrates how to implement an implicit wait in Selenium test script:

Explanation of Code

Importing necessary libraries

Explanation

The first three lines of the code are import statements that import the necessary libraries required to execute the Selenium WebDriver script.

Creating the main class

Explanation

The next lines define the main class of the program. In Java, every program must have a class with a main method that serves as the entry point for the program. The Example class is declared as public and contains a main method that takes an array of String arguments.

Setting up the ChromeDriver

Explanation

The System.setProperty method is used to set the path to the chromedriver executable file. This step is required because Selenium needs to know the path of the ChromeDriver executable to launch the Chrome browser. The WebDriver interface is then used to create a new instance of the ChromeDriver class, which launches a new instance of the Google Chrome browser.

Setting the Implicit Wait

Explanation

The driver. manage().timeouts().implicitlyWait() method is used to set the Implicit Wait duration for the WebDriver instance. The implicitlyWait() method takes two arguments: the duration of the waiting period and the time unit of the waiting period. In this case, we are setting the wait period to 10 seconds using the TimeUnit.SECONDS argument.