title: splinter: faster way to find elements?
body: <p>so I'm using the <a href="http://splinter.cobrateam.info/" rel="nofollow">python splinter library</a> to test a web app and a problem I am running into is following when I am checking if an element exists and I'm manually finding each to manipulate it.</p>
  
  <p>The problem is that when the inputs list gets bigger than 4 items or more and it runs into case when the element doesn't exist, it takes 12+ seconds to complete.</p>
  
  <p>I also tried setting wait_time=1, but if inputs list is bigger than 10, it would take 10 times in total should the element not exist anywhere on the page.</p>
  
  <pre><code>for i in inputs:
      if browser.element_exists():
          elm = browser.find_element():
          elm.text()
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I need some way to speed this up so that this element checking happens in parallel, without one by one. The only thing I can think of is executing javascript which I don't like (I'd like to keep it all in python).</p>
  
  <pre><code>def get_columns(current_depth,step,element):
      columns = []
      for xpath in xpaths:
          what = parse_xpath(row[2])
          if browser.is_element_present_by_xpath(xpath,wait_time=1):
              element = browser.find_by_xpath(xpath)
              columns.append(element.text)
          else:
              columns.append('none')
      return columns
  </code></pre>