Protractor - Failed: stale element reference: element is not attached to the page document

Question

I have a function in my protractor e2e page object that unchecks several options from a dropdown menu. It had previously worked fine, but now I'm getting the following error:

Failed: stale element reference: element is not attached to the page document

I have tried fetching the elements on each iteration of the for loop, but the for loop executes before the promise is resolved the first time, meaning that the "limit" value for x is passed repeatedly, and the test just clicks on the same dropdown option several times.

this.uncheckColumns = function(limit) {
    element(by.className('fa-cog')).click();
    element.all(by.className('multiSelectLi')).then(function(options) {
        for (x = 1; x < limit; x++) {
            options[x].click();
        };
    });
};

Solution

How about using each(element, index):

element.all(by.className('multiSelectLi')).each(function(option, index) {
    if (index < limit) {
        option.click();
    }
});

Or, in conjunction with filter(element, index):

element.all(by.className('multiSelectLi')).filter(function(option, index) {
    return index < limit;
}).each(function(option) {
    option.click();
});

---

Also, a naive approach to solve the problem (calling element.all() continuously in the loop):

for (var index = 0; index < limit; index++) {
    var option = element.all(by.className('multiSelectLi')).get(index);
    option.click();
};

Comments

[Daniel Bogart]

Same errors for both - Failed: stale element reference: element is not attached to the page document - it seems like because the DOM is changing, I'm required to once again fetch all the 'multiSelectLi' elements.

[alecxe]

@DanielBogart sounds like yes. Well, the naive approach would be to have a while index < limit loop maintaining the index manually in the loop, repeating element.all calls on every iteration and use get(index) to get the n-th element. Let me know if you need an example.

[alecxe]

@DanielBogart provided, please check if it helps or not.