Checking an element's presence

The Selenium WebDriver does not implement Selenium RC's isElementPresent() method to check if an element is present on a page. This method is useful for building a reliable test that checks an element's presence before performing any action on it.

In this recipe, we will write a method similar to the isElementPresent() method.

How to do it...

To implement the isElementPresent() method, follow these steps:

1. Create a method isElementPresent() and keep it accessible to your tests, shown as follows:

   private boolean isElementPresent(By by) {
     try {
       driver.findElement(by);
         return true;
       } catch (NoSuchElementException e) {
         return false;
     }
   }

2. Now, implement a test that calls the isElementPresent() method. It will check if the desired element is present on a page. If found, it will click on the element; else it fails the test. This is done as follows:

   @Test
   public void testIsElementPresent() {
     // Check if element with locator criteria...