Existence of an element using Selenium

Question

I have seen a couple of ways to test if an element exists. One way:

private boolean existsElement(String id) {
    try {
        driver.findElement(By.id(id));
    } catch (NoSuchElementException e) {
        return false;
    }
    return true;
}

And another way:

Boolean isPresent = driver.findElements(By.yourLocator).size() > 0

but adding an exception to test something isn't good practice and using the size method will take too long if you have an implicit wait.

Are there any other efficient ways to test for existence? If not, which of the two will be the preferred way to do it?

Answer 1

From the findElement(By) documentation:

findElement should not be used to look for non-present elements, use findElements(By) and assert zero length response instead.