What is Stale Element Reference Exception in Selenium Webdriver & How To Fix It?

We may encounter StaleElementReferenceException while working with Selenium webdriver. We can fix the StaleElementReferenceException in the Selenium webdriver. The term stale means something which is not fresh and decayed. Thus a stale element points to an element that is not present anymore.

There may be a case when an element was in DOM initially but after modifications in Document Object Model (DOM), the element becomes stale and the StaleElementReferenceException is thrown if we attempt to access this element.

This exception is caused whenever an element is not present in the DOM or deleted. We can handle this exception in the following ways −

• Refreshing the page and verifying again.
• Implement the retry method.

Example1

Code Implementation to illustrate StaleElementException.

import org.openqa.selenium.By;
import org.openqa.selenium.WebDriver;
import org.openqa.selenium.WebElement;
import org.openqa.selenium.chrome.ChromeDriver;
import java.util.concurrent.TimeUnit;
public class StaleElmnt{
   public static void main(String[] args) {
      System.setProperty("webdriver.chrome.driver", "C:\Users\ghs6kor\Desktop\Java\chromedriver.exe");
      WebDriver driver = new ChromeDriver();

      //implicit wait
      driver.manage().timeouts().implicitlyWait(5, TimeUnit.SECONDS);

      //application launch
      driver.get("https://www.tutorialspoint.com/about/about_careers.htm");

      // identify element
      WebElement l = driver.findElement(By.id("gsc-i-id1"));

      //enter text
      l.sendKeys("Selenium");

      //refresh page
      driver.navigate().refresh();

      //again enter text
      l.sendKeys("Selenium");

      //browser quit
      driver.quit();
   }
}

Output

Example2

Code Implementation to fix the StaleElementException.

import org.openqa.selenium.By;
import org.openqa.selenium.WebDriver;
import org.openqa.selenium.WebElement;
import org.openqa.selenium.chrome.ChromeDriver;
import java.util.concurrent.TimeUnit;
import org.openqa.selenium.StaleElementReferenceException;
public class StaleElmntFix{
   public static void main(String[] args) {
      System.setProperty("webdriver.chrome.driver", "C:\Users\ghs6kor\Desktop\Java\chromedriver.exe");
      WebDriver driver = new ChromeDriver();

      //implicit wait
      driver.manage().timeouts().implicitlyWait(5, TimeUnit.SECONDS);

      //application launch
      driver.get("https://www.tutorialspoint.com/about/about_careers.htm");

      // identify element
      WebElement l = driver.findElement(By.id("gsc-i-id1"));

      //enter text
      l.sendKeys("Selenium");

      //refresh page
      driver.navigate().refresh();

      //fix exception with try-catch block
      try{
         l.sendKeys("Selenium");
      }
      catch(StaleElementReferenceException e){
         l = driver.findElement(By.id("gsc-i-id1"));
         l.sendKeys("Selenium");

         //obtain value entered
         String s= l.getAttribute("value");
         System.out.println("Value entered is: " +s);
      }
      driver.quit();
   }
}

Output