Selenium Webdriver: No such element exception even though element gets available after waiting for some time

Question

I've been keep on getting NoSuchElementException whenever I try to get an web element. I know that the web element becomes present after some time. So, I've explicitly waited for 5-10 seconds until the web element gets loaded but even then I am still getting NoSuchElementException. Does anyone know how to prevent this exception? Here is my code:

String s=System.getProperty("user.dir");
System.setProperty("webdriver.chrome.driver", s+"\\Chrome090615\\chromedriver.exe");
ChromeDriver driver=new ChromeDriver();
try{
    driver.manage().window().maximize();
    driver.get("http://site21.way2sms.com/content/index.html");

    driver.manage().timeouts().implicitlyWait(5, TimeUnit.SECONDS);
    driver.findElementByXPath("//*[@id='username']").sendKeys("9XXXXXXXXX");
    driver.findElementByXPath("//*[@id='password']").sendKeys("XXXX");
    driver.findElementByXPath("//*[@id='loginBTN']").click();
    if(driver.findElementByXPath("//*[@id='ebFrm']/div[2]/div[1]/input").isDisplayed()==true)
    {
        driver.findElementByXPath("//*[@id='ebFrm']/div[2]/div[1]/input").click();
    }
    else {
        new WebDriverWait(driver, 5).until(ExpectedConditions.visibilityOfElementLocated(By.id("ebFrm")));
        System.out.println("Waiting for 5 secs");
    }
    boolean ispresent=driver.findElementByXPath("//*[@id='sendSMS']/a").isDisplayed();
    driver.findElementByXPath("//*[@id='sendSMS']/a").click();
    System.out.println("Clicked sendSms");
    driver.findElementByXPath("//*[@id='sendSMS']/a").click();

I'm getting exception for the 'sendSMS' id. Whenever it tries to find this element, it throws NoSuchElementException all the time!

Answer 1

First of all, wait for the element you'll be clicking. Right now you're waiting for a different element.

Here's how: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/20903231/selenium-wait-until-element-is-present

Then, if you still get that error, the ID is probably wrong and thus not actually present on the page (in the same frame).

And why do you use XPath to locate by ID? Using findElementById is much cleaner.