AppiumLibrary: Element Should Not Be Visible Keyword? - appium

Question

In AppiumLibrary, as of version 1.4.5, a very handy keyword called Element Should Be Visible has been introduced. But I am looking for the opposite version of that keyword too, which would be something like Element Should Not Be Visible. Since AppiumLibrary doesn't have that yet, is there any way we could achieve this?

Answer 1

There's always the possibility of expanding the library's python code, this shouldn't be very difficult. You basically just need to clone the Element Should Be Visible keyword definition and change the condition to do the opposite.
But, if that's not a possibility for you, perhaps you could use the keyword Run Keyword And Expect Error, in combination with the keyword you mentioned, Element Should Be Visible. Using this keyword on an element that isn't visible would throw an error, which in this particular case would be the desired outcome.
Still, that's a fishy workaround which will not help the readability of your test, and you should consider first looking into expanding the library itself.

Answer 2

Thanks to Verv for the guidelines. I tried both approaches that he suggested, and both seem to be super easy. For future reference, I'm explaining both methods here.
Method 1:
Under AppiumeLibrary/keywords directory, there's a file called _element.py, which defines the Element Should Be Visible keyword. I was able to clone it to create the new keyword I was looking for.
Below is the code snippet that defines Element Should Be Visible
def element_should_be_visible(self, locator, loglevel='INFO'):
"""Verifies that element identified with locator is visible.
Key attributes for arbitrary elements are `id` and `name`. See
`introduction` for details about locating elements.
New in AppiumLibrary 1.4.5
"""
if not self._element_find(locator, True, True).is_displayed():
self.log_source(loglevel)
raise AssertionError("Element '%s' should be visible "
"but did not" % locator)
Next to the above code snippet, you can add the following code snippet to define a new keyword Element Should Not Be Visible
def element_should_not_be_visible(self, locator, loglevel='INFO'):
"""Verifies that element identified with locator is visible.
Key attributes for arbitrary elements are `id` and `name`. See
`introduction` for details about locating elements.
New in AppiumLibrary 1.4.5
"""
if self._element_find(locator, True, True).is_displayed():
self.log_source(loglevel)
raise AssertionError("Element '%s' should not be visible "
"but did" % locator)
Method 2
If you don't want to expand the existing library, you could just use the combination of existing keywords as follows:
${isVisible}= Run Keyword And Return Status Element Should Be Visible 'someElementSelector'
Should Be Equal ${isVisible} ${FALSE}