Implicit vs. Explicit Waits in Selenium-WebDriver: Which Should You Choose?

Best Practices for Waiting in Selenium-WebDriver

When working with Selenium-WebDriver, it's often necessary to implement waits to ensure that elements are loaded before performing actions on them. Two common approaches are implicit and explicit waits.

Implicit Waits:

Implicit waits are set using driver.manage().timeouts().implicitlyWait(2, TimeUnit.SECONDS);. They globally affect all driver operations, providing a timeout period for all element lookup attempts. This approach can be convenient for scenarios where there is unpredictable UI load time, but it can result in longer wait times overall.

Explicit Waits:

Explicit waits, such as WebDriverWait.until(condition-that-finds-the-element);, are executed on specific elements or conditions. They provide a more targeted approach, allowing for precise wait times and the ability to specify conditions like element presence or visibility.

Comparison:

Feature	Implicit Waits	Explicit Waits
Global Scope	Yes	No
Customization	Limited	Highly customizable
Precision	Less precise	Precise

Recommended Approach:

In most situations, it's recommended to use explicit waits (specifically fluentWait) instead of implicit waits. FluentWait is a type of explicit wait that provides advanced customization options, including flexible timeouts, polling intervals, and exception handling.

Example of FluentWait:

<code class="java">public WebElement fluentWait(final By locator) {
    Wait<webdriver> wait = new FluentWait<webdriver>(driver)
            .withTimeout(30, TimeUnit.SECONDS)
            .pollingEvery(5, TimeUnit.SECONDS)
            .ignoring(NoSuchElementException.class);

    WebElement foo = wait.until(new Function<webdriver webelement>() {
        public WebElement apply(WebDriver driver) {
            return driver.findElement(locator);
        }
    });

    return foo;
}</webdriver></webdriver></webdriver></code>

By utilizing fluentWait, you can set specific timeouts for element lookup and avoid unnecessary global wait times that can slow down your tests.

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