An Overview on Locators
In this post, we’ll learn what is Locators and types of Locators.
What is Locators ?
Locators are used to identify the element.
In Selenium before performing any action (click, type etc) we should find the element using locators. In Selenium there are 8 types are locators. All of them are static methods in By class (it is an abstract class).
In this post, we’ll learn what is Locators and types of Locators.
What is Locators ?
Locators are used to identify the element.
In Selenium before performing any action (click, type etc) we should find the element using locators. In Selenium there are 8 types are locators. All of them are static methods in By class (it is an abstract class).
- All the methods takes string as argument and it returns an object of type By.
- The By object is used as input argument for findElement() method.
- Return type of findElement() method is WebElement (it is an Interface).
The list of Selenium Locators:
- By.tagName
- By.id
- By.name
- By.className
- By.linkText
- By.partialLinkText
- By.cssSelector
- By.xpath
Code: Selenium code to click on a link using ‘tagName’:
HTML Code:-
<html>
<body>
<a href=http://localhose id=”a1” name =”n1” class=”c1”>actitime</a>
</body>
</html>
- using tagName
driver.findElement(By.tagName("a")).click();
In the browser find the element by tag name ‘a’ and click on it.
}
driver.findElement(By.name("n1")).click();
driver.findElement(By.partialLinkText("acti")).click();
Important Note:
<a href=http://localhose id=”a1” name =”n1” class=”c1”>actitime</a>
</body>
</html>
- using tagName
driver.findElement(By.tagName("a")).click();
In the browser find the element by tag name ‘a’ and click on it.
import org.openqa.selenium.By;
import org.openqa.selenium.WebDriver;
import org.openqa.selenium.WebElement;
import org.openqa.selenium.firefox.FirefoxDriver;
public class Demo
{
public static void main(String[] args)
{
WebDriver driver = new FirefoxDriver();
driver.get("file:///D:///Demo.html");
driver.findElement(By.tagName("a")).click();
}
- using id
driver.findElement(
By.id("a1")).click();
In the browser find the element by id ‘a1’ and click on it.
import org.openqa.selenium.By;
import org.openqa.selenium.WebDriver;
import org.openqa.selenium.WebElement;
import org.openqa.selenium.firefox.FirefoxDriver;
public class Demo
{
public static void main(String[] args)
{
WebDriver driver = new FirefoxDriver();
driver.get("file:///D:///Demo.html");
driver.findElement(By.id("a1")).click();
}
}
- using name
In the browser find the element by name ‘n1’ and click on it.
import org.openqa.selenium.By;
import org.openqa.selenium.WebDriver;
import org.openqa.selenium.WebElement;
import org.openqa.selenium.firefox.FirefoxDriver;
public class Demo
{
public static void main(String[] args)
{
WebDriver driver = new FirefoxDriver();
driver.get("file:///D:///Demo.html");
driver.findElement(By.name("n1")).click();
}
}
- using class
driver.findElement(By.className("c1")).click();
In the browser find the element by className ‘c1’ and click on it.
import org.openqa.selenium.By;
import org.openqa.selenium.WebDriver;
import org.openqa.selenium.WebElement;
import org.openqa.selenium.firefox.FirefoxDriver;
public class Demo
{
public static void main(String[] args)
{
WebDriver driver = new FirefoxDriver();
driver.get("file:///D:///Demo.html");
driver.findElement(By.className("c1")).click();
}
}
- using linkText
driver.findElement(
By.linkText("actitime")).click();
In the browser find the element by linkText ‘actitime’ and click on it.
import org.openqa.selenium.By;
import org.openqa.selenium.WebDriver;
import org.openqa.selenium.WebElement;
import org.openqa.selenium.firefox.FirefoxDriver;
public class Demo
{
public static void main(String[] args)
{
WebDriver driver = new FirefoxDriver();
driver.get("file:///D:///Demo.html");
driver.findElement(By.linkText("actitime")).click();
}
}
- using partialLinkText
In the browser find the element by partialLinkText ‘acti’ and click on it.
import org.openqa.selenium.By;
import org.openqa.selenium.WebDriver;
import org.openqa.selenium.WebElement;
import org.openqa.selenium.firefox.FirefoxDriver;
public class Demo
{
public static void main(String[] args)
{
WebDriver driver = new FirefoxDriver();
driver.get("file:///D:///Demo.html");
driver.findElement(By.partialLinkText("acti")).click();
}
}
- If specified locator is matching with more than one element then findElement() method returns the address of first matching element.
- If the specified locator is not matching with any of the element then findElement() method will throw ‘NoSuchElementException’.
