{"id":10,"date":"2020-11-08T13:26:53","date_gmt":"2020-11-08T13:26:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/automationbyrain.com\/?p=10"},"modified":"2020-11-09T09:11:06","modified_gmt":"2020-11-09T09:11:06","slug":"how-to-get-element-with-selenium-webdriver","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/automationbyrain.com\/?p=10","title":{"rendered":"How to Get Element with Selenium Webdriver"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

In order to interact with the UI of a web application, we need to have a WebElement object.
Here\u2019s a (very) simple example of getting an element from \u201cgoogle.com\u201d:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

  1. Navigate to www.google.com<\/a><\/li>
  2. Right click + inspect element<\/li>
  3. Find a unique identifier (id\/class name) <\/li>
  4. Use selenium \u201cfindElement(By)\u201d<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n
    \"google<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
    \nWebDriver driver;\n\n@Test\npublic void getElementTest()\n{\n   driver  = new ChromeDriver();\n   driver.get(\"http:\/\/wwww.google.com\");\n\n   WebElement element = driver.findElement(By.className(\"RNNXgb\"));\n }\n<\/code><\/pre>\n\n\n\n
    POSSIBLE PROBLEMS WITH THE CODE ABOVE<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
    The code isn\u2019t generic and not reusable.<\/strong>
    The default Selenium design will throw an exception, which will fail your test<\/p>\n\n\n\n
    What happens in case the element is not found? <\/strong>
    The default Selenium design will throw an exception, which will fail your test.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
    Is it good?<\/strong> I personally don\u2019t think that basing your tests on possible exceptions is a good practice, that\u2019s why \u201cWe got to take the power back\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
    POSSIBLE SOLUTIONS TO THE CODE ABOVE<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
    First,  we will move our code to a seperate method, so we would be able to access it from multiple tests: <\/p>\n\n\n\n
    public WebElement getElementByClassName(String className)\n{\n    WebElement element;\n    try\n    {\n        element = driver.findElement(By.className(className));\n     }\n     catch (Exception e)\n     {\n         element = null;\n     }\n     return element;\n }<\/code><\/pre>\n\n\n\n
    Explanation:
    Our method is using a \u201ctry\u201d and \u201ccatch\u201d blocks. Why? As was mentioned earlier, in case the element wasn\u2019t found, Selenium will throw an exception which will fail our test. By enforcing a return value, we can decide in our test, what to do next: fail the test, try again, try a different identifier or whatever<\/p>\n\n\n\n
    @Test\npublic void getElementTest()\n{\n    driver  = new ChromeDriver();\n    driver.get(\"http:\/\/wwww.google.com\");\n\n    WebElement element = this.getElementByClassName(\"RNNXgb\");\n }<\/code><\/pre>\n\n\n\n
    As you can see, we\u2019re now using a reference to our new method and we don\u2019t need to be afraid of any exception.
    Let\u2019s say now that we want to use an \u201cid\u201d. We can write the same method for using an id:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
    public WebElement getElementById(String id)\n{\n    WebElement element;\n    try\n    {\n        element = driver.findElement(By.id(id));\n    }\n    catch (Exception e)\n    {\n        element = null;\n    }\n    return element;\n }<\/code><\/pre>\n\n\n\n
    Voila! but\u2026 wait! Did you recognize a problem with our code? 
    Yes, you are right: Both methods are practically the same beside the identifier. It means that we now need to maintain two methods with similar characteristics separately.
    What can we do? We can merge them into one \u201cparent\u201d method: <\/p>\n\n\n\n
    public WebElement getElementBy(By by)\n{\n    WebElement element;\n    try\n    {\n       element = driver.findElement(by);\n    }\n    catch (Exception e)\n    {\n        element = null;\n    }\n    return element;\n } <\/code><\/pre>\n\n\n\n
    Now, this method is handling the exception, and all we need to do is to access it from our previous methods: <\/p>\n\n\n\n
    public WebElement getElementByClassName(String className)\n{\n    return this.getElementBy(By.className(className));\n}\n\npublic WebElement getElementById(String id)\n{\n    return this.getElementBy(By.id(id));\n}<\/code><\/pre>\n\n\n\n
    Needless to say that we don\u2019t need to change anything in our test. For the purpose of this example we will fail the test in case the element is null:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
    @Test\npublic void getElementTest()\n{\n    driver  = new ChromeDriver();\n    driver.get(\"http:\/\/wwww.google.com\");\n\n    WebElement element = this.getElementByClassName(\"RNNXgb\");\n\n    Assert.assertNotNull(element,\"The element is null, failing test!\");\n }<\/code><\/pre>\n\n\n\n
    Below you can check out our video tutorial for this article:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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