Selenium WebDriver StaleElementReferenceException

We get around this issue by doing something called WebdriverWrapper and WebElementWrapper.

What these wrappers do is handle the StaleElementException within and then use the locator to re-evaluate and get the new WebElement object. This way, you need to spread the code handling the exception all over your codebase and localize it to one class.

I will look into open sourcing just these couple of classes soon and add a link here if you folk are interested.

That exception is thrown when you try to use a method of a WebElement that is not longer on the page. If your grid is dynamically loading data and you refresh the grid, any references to elements on that grid would be 'stale'. Double check that the element you're trying to reference is on the page in your tests, and you may need to re-instantiate the object.

I ran across this same problem and could not find any solutions. Came up with a solution and posting it here, hope this helps someone with the same problem. I created a class to handle stale elements depending on their type, cssselector, id, etc and simply call it like I would any other page object.

public void StaleElementHandleByID (String elementID)
{
    int count = 0;
    boolean clicked = false;
    while (count < 4 && !clicked)
    {
        try 
        {
            WebElement yourSlipperyElement= driver.findElement(By.id(elementID));
            yourSlipperyElement.click(); 
            clicked = true;
        } 
        catch (StaleElementReferenceException e)
        {
            e.toString();
            System.out.println("Trying to recover from a stale element :" + e.getMessage());
            count = count+1;
        }
    }
}

I'd recommend only using this on elements you know cause problems for WebDriver.