selenium - how can you find an element using a parent element? - xpath

Question

I am using selenium as a web scraper and would like to locate a number of tables and then for every table (by looping) locate an element inside that table (without going through the entire document again).
I am using the Iwebelement.FindElements(By.XPath) but keeps giving an error saying 'element no longer connected to DOM'
here is an excerpt from my code:
IList[IWebElement] elementsB = driver.FindElements(By.XPath("//*[#id=\"col_main\"]/table[#class='risultati']"));
// which loads all tables with class 'risultati'
foreach (IWebElement iwe in elementsB)
{
IList[IWebElement] ppp = iwe.FindElements(By.XPath("//table"));
}
here I am trying to load inner tables from inside each table found in elements, but keeps giving me the error mentioned above.

Answer 1

I believe the issue is with the double slashes in
IList[IWebElement] ppp = iwe.FindElements(By.XPath("//table"));
It shouldn't have any slashes so that the find begins with your iwe element. Double slashes mean look anywhere in the document.
should be
IList[IWebElement] ppp = iwe.FindElements(By.XPath("table"));

Answer 2

I would do it something like this:
By tableLocator = By.XPath("//table");
By itemLocator = By.XPath("//*[#id=\"col_main\"]/table[#class='risultati']");
for(WebElement iwe : elementsB) {
List<WebElement> tableList = iwe.FindElements( tableLocator );
for ( WebElement we : tableList ) {
we.getElementByLocator( itemLocator );
System.out.println( we.getText() );
}
}
public static WebElement getElementByLocator( final By locator ) {
LOGGER.info( "Get element by locator: " + locator.toString() );
final long startTime = System.currentTimeMillis();
Wait<WebDriver> wait = new FluentWait<WebDriver>( driver )
.withTimeout(30, TimeUnit.SECONDS)
.pollingEvery(5, TimeUnit.SECONDS)
.ignoring( StaleElementReferenceException.class ) ;
int tries = 0;
boolean found = false;
WebElement we = null;
while ( (System.currentTimeMillis() - startTime) < 91000 ) {
LOGGER.info( "Searching for element. Try number " + (tries++) );
try {
we = wait.until( ExpectedConditions.visibilityOfElementLocated( locator ) );
found = true;
break;
} catch ( StaleElementReferenceException e ) {
LOGGER.info( "Stale element: \n" + e.getMessage() + "\n");
}
}
long endTime = System.currentTimeMillis();
long totalTime = endTime - startTime;
if ( found ) {
LOGGER.info("Found element after waiting for " + totalTime + " milliseconds." );
} else {
LOGGER.info( "Failed to find element after " + totalTime + " milliseconds." );
}
return we;
}