Test if element is present using Selenium WebDriver?

Is there a way how to test if an element is present? Any findElement method would end in an exception, but that is not what I want, because it can be that an element is not present and that is okay, that is not a fail of the test, so an exception can not be the solution.

I’ve found this post: Selenium c# Webdriver: Wait Until Element is Present
But this is for C# and I am not very good at it. Can anyone translate the code into Java? I am sorry guys, I tried it out in Eclipse but I don’t get it right into Java code.

This is the code:

public static class WebDriverExtensions{
    public static IWebElement FindElement(this IWebDriver driver, By by, int timeoutInSeconds){

        if (timeoutInSeconds > 0){
            var wait = new WebDriverWait(driver, TimeSpan.FromSeconds(timeoutInSeconds));
            return wait.Until(drv => drv.FindElement(by));
        }

        return driver.FindElement(by);
    }
}