Selenium - C# - Webdriver - Unable to find element

Question

Using selenium in C# I am trying to open a browser, navigate to Google and find the text search field.

I try the below

IWebDriver driver = new InternetExplorerDriver(@"C:\");

driver.Navigate().GoToUrl("www.google.com");

driver.Manage().Timeouts().ImplicitlyWait(TimeSpan.FromSeconds(5));

IWebElement password = driver.FindElement(By.Id("gbqfq"));

but get the following error -

Unable to find element with id == gbqfq

Answer 1

This looks like a copy of this question that has already been answered.

I can show you what I've done, which seems to work well for me:

public static IWebElement WaitForElementToAppear(IWebDriver driver, int waitTime, By waitingElement)
{
        IWebElement wait = new WebDriverWait(driver, TimeSpan.FromSeconds(waitTime)).Until(ExpectedConditions.ElementExists(waitingElement));
        return wait;
}

This should wait waitTime amount of time until either the element is found or not. I've run into a lot of issues with dynamic pages not loading the elements I need right away and the WebDriver trying to find the elements faster than the page can load them, and this is my solution to it. Hope it helps!

Answer 2

You can try using a spin wait

int timeout =0;
while (driver.FindElements(By.id("gbqfq")).Count == 0 && timeout <500){
  Thread.sleep(1);
  timeout++;

 }
 IWebElement password = driver.FindElement(By.Id("gbqfq"));

this should help make sure that the element has actually had time to appear.

also note, the "gbqfq" id is kinda a smell. I might try something more meaningful to match on than that id.