Testing / Selenium Interview questions

What is a WebElement in Selenium?

A WebElement is Selenium's representation of a single DOM node, returned by findElement(), and it's the object interactions like .click(), .sendKeys(), and .getText() are called on.

WebElement email = driver.findElement(By.id("email"));
email.sendKeys("user@example.com");
System.out.println(email.getText());

Because a WebElement reference is tied to a specific DOM node at the moment it was found, it becomes invalid - throwing StaleElementReferenceException - if that part of the DOM is replaced or removed afterward, even if a visually identical element reappears. This is a key behavioral difference from frameworks with lazy, auto-re-resolving locators.

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A WebElement reference becomes invalid when: The browser window is resized

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The underlying DOM node it refers to is replaced or removed

✓ Correct! Well done.

More than 10 seconds pass

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Which exception signals an invalid WebElement reference? NoSuchElementException

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StaleElementReferenceException

✓ Correct! Well done.

TimeoutException

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