unable to locate element with Watir webdriver, Firefox, PayPal sandbox pay with PayPal - paypal

Question

I am getting the error
Watir::Exception::UnknownObjectException: unable to locate element, using
{:id=>"submitLogin", :tag_name=>"input"}
from /Users/ktobo/.rbenv/versions/2.2.3/lib/ruby/gems/2.2.0/
gems/watir-webdriver-0.9.1/lib/watir-webdriver/elements/element.rb:536:in
`assert_element_found'
when running an Rspec test using Watir webdriver with Firefox.
# select "Pay with my PayPal account"
#browser.span(:class, 'buttonAsLink').when_present.click
#browser.text_field(:id, 'login_email').when_present(15).set(hsh[:email])
#browser.text_field(:id, 'login_password').when_present(15).set(hsh[:password])
#browser.input(:id, 'submitLogin').when_present.when_enabled.click
#browser.input(:id, 'continue').when_present.click
If I execute these steps one-by-one in a console, everything's great. When running the test with run.rb, the first click action seems to fail to select the "Pay with my PayPal account" span. I'm not sure why it doesn't fail on that step. If I manually click that link after the failure, I see that the password field is not populated, so something seems to be going awry before the fourth line.

Answer 1

Even with the when_present calls, this is most likely a race condition if it works step by step in irb, but not when run together directly. When debugging it is often useful to put a (long-ish) sleep before the problem step just to see if you are hitting a race condition. If the sleep fixes it, then you know what the problem is and just need to figure out the right thing to wait for before clicking.
Another possibility is that this could be an issue where the browser being in the "active window" in the operating system matters. (Commands should work the same way, regardless, but this isn't always the case).
Additionally, running the test with Chrome to see if you have the same issues is also helpful in troubleshooting.
If none of this works, please update your question with an url or the html you are interacting with.
On a side note, I'm surprised that nesting when_present & when_enabled works. when enabled probably should include present? as a precondition, I'll look into doing that.