How to check if an element exists?

Question

In my C# Windows Forms application using Firefox Selenium WebDriver I need to check if an element exists and if it doesn't, click a different one. If there is a video, after it is watched it becomes W_VIEWED:

driver.FindElement(By.XPath("//div[@class='video']/a")).Click();
else
{
    driver.FindElement(By.XPath("//div[@class='W_VIEWED']/a")).Click();
}

Error 3 Only assignment, call, increment, decrement, await, and new object expressions can be used as a statement 242

Answer 1

You can check if an element exits or not by using

bool isElementDisplayed = driver.findElement(By.xpath("element")).isDisplayed()

Remember, findElement throws an exception if it doesn't find an element, so you need to properly handle it.

In one of my applications, I handled an exception by checking the element in a separate function:

private bool IsElementPresent(By by)
{
    try
    {
        driver.FindElement(by);
        return true;
    }
    catch (NoSuchElementException)
    {
        return false;
    }
}

Call function:

if (IsElementPresent(By.Id("element name")))
{
    // Do if exists
}
else
{
    // Do if does not exists
}