How to use watir-webdriver to wait for page load

Question

Using watir-webdriver, how do I wait for a page to load after I click a link?

At the moment I am using:

sleep n

But this is not ideal as the page response varies so much.

Is there a way to test whether the page is ready or whether there is a certain element in the page? I understand in the normal Watir gem there is Watir::Waiter.wait_until or something similar, but I don't see this in the webdriver version.

Answer 1

I don't know if they're the best way, but this is how I'm handling this for waiting for an updating div to clear:

while browser.div(:id=>"updating_div").visible? do sleep 1 end

This is how I handle waiting for something to display:

until browser.div(:id=>"some_div").exists? do sleep 1 end

Answer 2

I had the same problem, and I tried to fix it by combining wait_until_present and

until browser.div(:id=>"some_div").exists? do sleep 1 end

tricks povided by @marc:

some_div = browser.div(:id => 'some_div')

begin 

  Watir::Wait.until
    some_div.visible?
  end

rescue Watir::Wait::TimeoutError

  until some_div.visible?
    sleep 1
  end
end

Notice that it is your own responsibility to make sure that

div(:id => "some_div")

does exist.

Answer 3

You can use the wait_until or waituntilExists methods.

Answer 4

Today's release adds an optional require that brings in some helpers for waiting for elements. These are not (at the moment) available in Watir 1.6, so be aware if you use both libraries side by side.

Check "AJAX and waiting for elements" in the Watir-webdriver Wiki for more information.

Answer 5

The best summary is found in "Waiting".

This is it in a nutshell:

require 'watir-webdriver'
b = Watir::Browser.start 'bit.ly/watir-webdriver-demo'
b.select_list(:id => 'entry_1').wait_until_present
b.text_field(:id => 'entry_0').when_present.set 'your name'
b.button(:value => 'Submit').click
b.button(:value => 'Submit').wait_while_present
Watir::Wait.until { b.text.include? 'Thank you' }

Answer 6

This is how I wait for AJAX in my project:

ajax_loader = $b.element(:xpath  => "//*[@id='spinner-modal-transparent' and @aria-hidden='true']/div/div/div/div/img[@alt='Ajax transparent loader']")

if ajax_loader.exists?
  ajax_loader.wait_while_present(timeout=350)
else
  puts "The AJAX loader was not present."
end

Answer 7

browser.wait_until can be used.

It's more helpful because you can define what to wait for in the parameters (()), as in:

browser.wait_until(browser.text.include("some text"))