StaleElementReferenceException on Python Selenium

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It means the element is no longer in the DOM, or it changed.

The following code will help you find the element by controlling and ignoring StaleElementExceptions and handling them just like any other NoSuchElementException. It waits for the element to NOT be stale, just like it waits for the element to be present. It also serves as a good example on how to properly wait for conditions in Selenium.

from selenium.common.exceptions import NoSuchElementException
from selenium.common.exceptions import StaleElementReferenceException
from selenium.webdriver.common.by import By
from selenium.webdriver.support.ui import WebDriverWait
from selenium.webdriver.support import expected_conditions

my_element_id = 'something123'
ignored_exceptions=(NoSuchElementException,StaleElementReferenceException,)
your_element = WebDriverWait(your_driver, some_timeout,ignored_exceptions=ignored_exceptions)\
                        .until(expected_conditions.presence_of_element_located((By.ID, my_element_id)))

To better understand the problem, imagine you are inside a for loop and think what happens during the iterations:

  1. something changes when you click on the element (last line)
  2. So the page is changing
  3. You enter the next iteration. Now are trying to find a new element (your first line inside the loop).
  4. You found the element
  5. It finishes changing
  6. You try to use it by getting an attribute
  7. Bam! The element is old. You got it in step 4, but it finished changing on step 5

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