Asserting that an element is not present

When testing an application, there are times when you may need to assert that an element is absent from the page. For example, after logging out, you might want to validate that a logged-in user profile is no longer present in the nav bar. Or after a delete action, you may want to confirm that the deleted item is no longer on the page.

Depending on what you’re trying to validate, there are several ways to assert that an element is not present in the mabl Trainer:

• Record steps out of order
• Use custom find
• Use a loop to wait until an element is absent

Record steps out of order

If you can access the element that should be absent using different credentials, on a different page, or before a delete action, try recording the assertion while the element is visible and then reposition it in your test.

See an example of this strategy in the following animation:

For example, to validate that an “Admin settings” element is absent for a restricted user role, you could try the following:

1. Pause recording and log in as a user that can see the “Admin settings” element.
2. With recording on create an “is not present” assertion step on that element. Note that the assertion will run and fail immediately while the element is present.
3. Move that assertion step to the part of the test where the restricted user is logged in.

When the test runs as the restricted user, the assertion should pass because the “Admin settings” element won’t be present.

Use custom find

If you can’t make the element appear during testing, but you know its CSS or XPath, you can record a custom find assertion:

1. Add a custom find step: + (Add step) > Find elements.
2. Select a Find type:
   • “First element” - to assert that the target element is absent - OR -
   • “Number of elements” - to assert that there are no elements matching the CSS or XPath
3. Enter the CSS or XPath and select “Make assertion”.
4. On the next page, configure assertion details
   • “First element” - configure an HTML assertion and set the assertion type to “is not present”
   • “Number of elements” - set the expected value to 0.

Asserting on the count of elements is also useful when you want to assert on the number of elements before and after a change. For example, if you delete a record from a table, you can use a custom find assertion on the count of elements before and after the change to assert that the table shows one less record.

Use a while loop to wait until an element is absent

If your test case requires waiting until an element is absent from the page, you can create a loop that exits once the element is not present. To implement this workflow, take the following steps:

1. Create a variable and assign it a number as a value.
2. Create a flow that loops using the variable you just created.
3. In the flow, add an IF step that asserts that the element is not present.
4. In the IF step, add a variable step that creates a new variable with the same name as the looping variable, and set the value to 0.
5. Add an ELSE step.
6. In the ELSE step, add a static wait step.

In the following example, the variable loop_total is initialized to 50. For a given loop iteration, if the toast tab is present, the test runs the ELSE scenario and waits 10 seconds. If the toast tab is absent, the test runs the IF scenario, which updates the value of loop_total to 0 and causes the loop to exit early.