Selenium - Types Of Locators

In this post, lets discuss about various types of Locators available to locate Web Page Elements.
This is the most crucial part of automation since we start automating after locating required elements on the Web Page !!

Before trying out any of the examples below, make sure that you have JAVA and Eclipse installed on your machine.
Also download Selenium JARS (Click here)

Different Types of Locators include :

• ID
• Class Name
• CSS
• LinkText
• Tag Name
• Xpath
• Name

These are the different methods used to locate Web Page elements.

Lets discuss each of them.

1 - Locating By ID :

          This is the first type of locator that we must use to locate an element (if ID of the required element exist). Since IDs are unique, we can find the required element easily by specifying its ID.

Example : 

          <input id = "email" class = "required" type = "text" />

WebElement element = driver.findElement(By.id("email"));

If there is no ID for some particular desired element than we have to use other methods of locating elements.

2 - Locating By Class Name :

          Since multiple elements can belong to the same class, we have to ensure that the required element is located when using this method of locating elements. This is mostly used in conjunction with CSS for locating the right element. By default, it will return the first match it finds on the page.

Example : 

          <input id = "email" class = "required" type = "text" />

WebElement element = driver.findElement(By.className("required"));

In this example, it finds the above tag but on actual sites you have to make sure that right element is found.

3 - Locating By CSS :
          This makes use of the DOM structure of the page and includes various combinations of other locators. Hence we will discuss about CSS method of locating elements in the next post.

4 - Locating By LinkText :
          This is used only when we want to find an element which is a link. We find it using the text of the link.
Example :
          <a href = "https://google.co.in"> Google </a>
Webelement element = driver.findElement(By.linkText("Google"));

This way we can find the link that is displayed with the required text that we want to find. The element is found only when the link with desired text is present on the page.

5 - Locating By Tag Name :
          Another way of locating element is by using the tag name of the element. But like class names, we can have the same tag appear multiple times on the page. So care must be taken while using this approach.
Example :
          <p> This is a para </p>
WebElement element = driver.findElement(By.tagName("p"));

Again, make sure that the right element is found.

6 - Locating By Name :
          This makes use of the name attribute of the element to be found.
Example :
          <div id="pancakes">
                <button type="button" name="pancake" value="Blueberry">Blueberry</button>
                <button type="button" name="pancake" value="Banana">Banana</button>
                <button type="button" name="pancake" value="Strawberry">Strawberry</button>
          </div>
WebElement element = driver.findElement(By.name("pancake"));

7 - Locating By Xpath :
          It is useful in case of cross browser testing since different browsers render CSS in different ways, hence using CSS selectors to locate elements would behave differently on different browsers.
To find Xpath - Right Click on the element and select "Copy Xpath".

To conclude, we have seen different types of locators that can be used to locate elements on a web page. The best way is to use ID or name of the element if they exist.

Will discuss about setting up of the project in Eclipse (integrating Selenium JARS) and CSS Selectors method of locating element in the upcoming post.
Happy Learning.

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