Refind WebElement which class removed at click event

Question

I have an element with a class a. So, in Selenium code I am getting with this:

WebElement element = driver.findElement(By.cssSelector(".a"));

Afterwards, I am clicking on it with element.click();. The click event removes the class a from the element - which exactly is the test case I am trying to execute.

So, now I wanted to ask the element if it already owns this class:

element.getAttribute("class").contains("a");

But this did not work because of the WebElement tried to find the element again by the given selector which was not clear to me. I thought the WebElement, once found, is internally copied throughout the scope. But obviously, it calls the linked selector every time it is called in the code.

So, how can I retrieve an element more persistently? How can I avoid the WebElement being refreshed on every call to track the changes of the already selected element?

Of course, I could use a work-around using the DOM, the parents or a list id. But I really want to avoid this, because I do not want to get too much information about the DOM structure into my test code. This is the reason why I added classes and ids.

---

Edit: Adding the log output:

WebElement element = driver.findElement(By.cssSelector(".a"));

1564042692783   webdriver::server   DEBUG   -> POST /session/2d7cce7d-bd10-4814-b619-b4c8dc212fac/elements {"value":".a","using":"css selector"}

1564042692787   Marionette  TRACE   0 -> [0,10,"WebDriver:FindElements",{"using":"css selector","value":".a"}]

1564042692793   Marionette  TRACE   0 <- [1,10,null,[{"element-6066-11e4-a52e-4f735466cecf":"517f4e9c-5d09-4fe0-8c34-4d8c153a9c4a","ELEMENT":"517f4e9c-5d09-4fe0-8c34-4d8c153a9c4a"}]]

1564042692794   webdriver::server   DEBUG   <- 200 OK {"value":[{"element-6066-11e4-a52e-4f735466cecf":"517f4e9c-5d09-4fe0-8c34-4d8c153a9c4a"}]}

As you can see, the received element is 517f4e9c-5d09-4fe0-8c34-4d8c153a9c4a.

element.click();

1564042703055   webdriver::server   DEBUG   -> POST /session/2d7cce7d-bd10-4814-b619-b4c8dc212fac/elements {"value":".a","using":"css selector"}

1564042703058   Marionette  TRACE   0 -> [0,11,"WebDriver:FindElements",{"using":"css selector","value":".a"}]

1564042703065   Marionette  TRACE   0 <- [1,11,null,[{"element-6066-11e4-a52e-4f735466cecf":"517f4e9c-5d09-4fe0-8c34-4d8c153a9c4a","ELEMENT":"517f4e9c-5d09-4fe0-8c34-4d8c153a9c4a"}]]

1564042703066   webdriver::server   DEBUG   <- 200 OK {"value":[{"element-6066-11e4-a52e-4f735466cecf":"517f4e9c-5d09-4fe0-8c34-4d8c153a9c4a"}]}

1564042703142   webdriver::server   DEBUG   -> POST /session/2d7cce7d-bd10-4814-b619-b4c8dc212fac/element/517f4e9c-5d09-4fe0-8c34-4d8c153a9c4a/click {"id":"517f4e9c-5d09-4fe0-8c34-4d8c153a9c4a"}

1564042703145   Marionette  TRACE   0 -> [0,12,"WebDriver:ElementClick",{"id":"517f4e9c-5d09-4fe0-8c34-4d8c153a9c4a"}]

1564042703380   Marionette  DEBUG   Canceled page load listener because no navigation has been detected

1564042703382   Marionette  TRACE   0 <- [1,12,null,{}]

1564042703384   webdriver::server   DEBUG   <- 200 OK {"value":null}

And now the check:

element.getAttribute("class");

1564042714064   webdriver::server   DEBUG   -> POST /session/2d7cce7d-bd10-4814-b619-b4c8dc212fac/elements {"value":".a","using":"css selector"}

1564042714067   Marionette  TRACE   0 -> [0,13,"WebDriver:FindElements",{"using":"css selector","value":".a"}]

1564042714070   Marionette  TRACE   0 <- [1,13,null,[]]

1564042714071   webdriver::server   DEBUG   <- 200 OK {"value":[]}

As you can see, no element has been returned now.

---

Edit: After evaluating the solution of @RahulL (which seems to work; at the click execution no further WebDriver:FindElements call is logged - in contrast to my log) I believe that the problem lies somewhere in the Aquillian Graphene implementation which wraps my Selenium. The findElement()call does not call the Selenium class directly. That's why I added these tags. It could be relevant for finding the problem.

So, the class definition:

import static org.junit.Assert.assertFalse;

import org.jboss.arquillian.container.test.api.RunAsClient;

import org.jboss.arquillian.drone.api.annotation.Drone;

import org.jboss.arquillian.junit.Arquillian;

import org.junit.Test;

import org.junit.runner.RunWith;

import org.openqa.selenium.By;

import org.openqa.selenium.WebDriver;

import org.openqa.selenium.WebElement;

@RunWith(Arquillian.class)

@RunAsClient

public class MyTests {

    @Drone

    WebDriver driver;

    @Test

    public void test_removeClassFromElement() {

        driver.navigate().refresh();

        driver.get("my.application");

        WebElement element = driver.findElement(By.className("a"))

        element.click();

        assertFalse(

            element .getAttribute("class").contains("a")

        );

    }

}

and the arquillian.xml:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

<arquillian xmlns="http://jboss.org/schema/arquillian"

    xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"

    xsi:schemaLocation="http://jboss.org/schema/arquillian

        http://jboss.org/schema/arquillian/arquillian_1_0.xsd">

    <extension qualifier="webdriver">

        <property name="browser">firefox</property>

        <property name="firefoxLogLevel">FINEST</property>

    </extension>

</arquillian>

Answer 1

This is a DIV element.

 

</div>

 

<script>

function myFunction() {

   var element = document.getElementById("myDIV");

   element.classList.remove("mystyle");

}

</script>

 

</body>

</html>

 

JAVA Code :

         WebElement element = driver.findElement(By.className("mystyle"));

         element.click();

         System.out.println(element.getAttribute("class"));

Enabled the FirefoxDriverLogLevel.TRACE. WebDriver logs

 

Find Element

 

WebElement element = driver.findElement(By.className("mystyle"));

 

webdriver::server   DEBUG -> POST /session/81662ee0-1195-4ff3-8687-667f3607ea89/element {

  "value": ".mystyle",

  "using": "css selector"

}

Got the element

 

webdriver::server DEBUG <- 200 OK {"value":{"element-6066-11e4-a52e-4f735466cecf":"c15725f8-89f9-4fec-af08-be1b9487defe"}}

 

Now click on the element

 

element.click();

 

  

webdriver::server   DEBUG -> POST /session/81662ee0-1195-4ff3-8687-667f3607ea89/element/c15725f8-89f9-4fec-af08-be1b9487defe/click {

  "id": "c15725f8-89f9-4fec-af08-be1b9487defe" }

Now send 'getAttribute'

 element.getAttribute("class")

 

webdriver::server DEBUG -> POST /session/81662ee0-1195-4ff3-8687-667f3607ea89/execute/sync { "script": "here selenium sends the getAttribute script", "args": [ { "element-6066-11e4-a52e-4f735466cecf": "c15725f8-89f9-4fec-af08-be1b9487defe" }, "class" ] }

 

5 Response :

webdriver::server DEBUG <- 200 OK {"value":""}