Every webpage is nothing but the set of of different elments. So we need to have idea on the following things before we start building the script.
1.Knowing the different elements on WebPage
2.Locating the elements on web page
3.Working wth the elemets
1. Knowing the different typesof elements on WebPage
By looking at the webpage we should be able to identify the type of element it consists.Sometimes we can check elements types by viewing the source code.Here are the common elements most of the time we encounter in the process of automation.
Text box
Drop-down List
Checkbox
Radio button
TextArea
Hyperlink
Image
Button
Frames
Alert dialog box
Window
2.Locating the elements on web page
Before starting let us have a look at the below sample form which consists of "First Name, Last name , Email address, Sex, Submit button".
Above form has 5 elements, three textboxes, one radio button and one submit button.We have successfully identified the elements type.Now we need to locate the elements on webpage using Selenium.1.Knowing the different elements on WebPage
2.Locating the elements on web page
3.Working wth the elemets
1. Knowing the different typesof elements on WebPage
By looking at the webpage we should be able to identify the type of element it consists.Sometimes we can check elements types by viewing the source code.Here are the common elements most of the time we encounter in the process of automation.
Text box
Drop-down List
Checkbox
Radio button
TextArea
Hyperlink
Image
Button
Frames
Alert dialog box
Window
2.Locating the elements on web page
Before starting let us have a look at the below sample form which consists of "First Name, Last name , Email address, Sex, Submit button".
If we see the viewsource of "First Name" textbox , it will look like
<input id="firstname" maxlength="45" name="firstname" type="text" />
It means we can locate the "First Name" text box on the webpage using 4 different locators i.e id, name, Xpath, CSS.
WebDriver driver=new FirefoxDriver() WebElement textbox=driver.findElement(By.name("firstname")); OR WebElement textbox=driver.findElement(By.id("firstname"));We can easily get the Xpath and CSS values of an element using firefox addons like Firebug and FirePath.
In selenium we can identify the elements on the webpage with the following locators.
Locating By Id
Locating By Name
Locating By Xpath
Locating Hyperlinks by LinkText
Locating By DOM
Locating By CSS
3.Working wth the elemets
Knowing the element type and locating the element is not what we actually want. We want to work with those elements to perform some action on the webpage say "locate the submit button on webpage and click on it".
In the next post , we will see how we can work with the different elements using selenium ...!! :)