Selenium java tests intermittently fails on firefox

Question

My selenium test suite always has a few tests failing intermittently on each run on the firefox browser. On the next run the same tests will pass and new tests will fail. It is usually times out after 3 minutes of webdriverwait looking for an element. I also increase the wait time after clicks with thread.sleep. Any advice on how to fix it?

This is the intermittently failing line.

WebElement listing = wait.until(ExpectedConditions.elementToBeClickable(By.linkText("Check the Listings"))); 

listing.click(); 

Thread.sleep(5000);

Thanks.

Answer 1

Here's an example of a fluent wait method that I've integrated with my testing that will poll to see if an element is present every 500 milliseconds for 30 seconds before failing, you can call it and treat it like a regular WebElement so it may be helpful in this case.

public static WebElement fluentWait(WebDriver driver, final By locator)
{
    Wait<WebDriver> wait = new FluentWait<WebDriver>(driver)
            .withTimeout(30, TimeUnit.SECONDS)
            .pollingEvery(500, TimeUnit.MILLISECONDS)
            .ignoring(NoSuchElementException.class);

    WebElement element = wait.until(new Function<WebDriver, WebElement>() {
        @Override
        public WebElement apply(WebDriver driver) {
            return driver.findElement(locator);
        }
    });
    return element;
}

So calling it would look something like:

WebElement listing = fluentWait(driver, By.linkText("Check the Listings"));

listing.click();

This should help you bypass the infamous Thread.sleep() dilemma

Answer 2

Sameer is right in his comment. Using thread.sleep is a considered a bad practice. I would suggest you to use Explicit wait.

Explicit waits would allow you to define your own wait conditions , based on conditions like presence of element located, alert is displayed or not.

Here is a good tutorial on how to use Explicit wait.

However, as a first approach, please debug whether this failure is due to waiting condition or there is some other reason behind it.

I would suggest you to post the errors/exceptions that you are getting when the test fails. This would help the people here in determining better, what the real cause it.