Watir: element exists but .exists? returns false

Question

I'm using Watir on a Rails project to scrape the following page: https://icecat.biz/fr/search?keyword=3030050010763

I need to check if the <a> tag with the 'src-routes-search-product-item-raw-style__descriptionTitle--8-vad' class exists, which it does, but the .exists? method is returning false.

b = Watir::Browser.new :chrome
b.goto "https://icecat.biz/fr/search?keyword=3030050010763"
p b.a(:class => "src-routes-search-product-item-raw-style__descriptionTitle--8-vad").exists?

I know the element exists because the following code is returning the href value of that same element:

b.a(:class => "src-routes-search-product-item-raw-style__descriptionTitle--8-vad").href

I've used the .exists? method to check if some elements exist on other pages and it works fine. For example, this is returning true:

b = Watir::Browser.new :chrome
b.goto "https://icecat.biz/fr/p/babyliss/bab5586e/hair+dryers-3030050010763-bab5586e-29245899.html"
p b.a(:data_type => "json").exists?

I can't seem to figure out what I'm doing wrong, any help would be appreciated.

Answer 1

This is due to the product list being loaded asynchronously. As a result, you will see that #exists? has a different result based on when you run it:

• If you check right after visiting the page, while the spinner is still visible, #exists? will be false.
• If you wait for the product list to load, #exists? will be true.

You can see this clearly by checking #exists? multiple times after loading the page:

b = Watir::Browser.new :chrome
b.goto "https://icecat.biz/fr/search?keyword=3030050010763"
5.times do
    p b.a(:class => "src-routes-search-product-item-raw-style__descriptionTitle--8-vad").exists?
end
#=> false
#=> false
#=> true
#=> true
#=> true

Note that methods that interact with the element, such as #href, will automatically wait for the element to exist before taking action.