Pass value to xpath at runtime - selenium

Please read the whole Q before disliking or commenting something. I have searched on internet before posting it here. I'm having the below project structure.
pages(package)
> Homepage.java
test(package)
> Flipkart.java
Inside Homepage.java i have declared all the WebElements using POM Page Factory methods and created respective method to click on Electronics link.
#FindBy(xpath = '//input[#title='Electronics']')
private WebElement lnkElectronics;
Inside Fipkart.java I'm calling the Electronics click method.
My doubt over here is the declared WebElement is specifically for Electronics.
Is there a way i can create a WebElement with type like mentioned below and pass value for %s dynamically from main method?
#FindBy(xpath = '//input[#title='%s']')
private WebElement lnkElectronics;

Answer referenced from Page Object Model in Selenium
You cannot create a FindBy with Variable, FindBy accepts only constants.
In case if you want to achieve that variability then you should write or find the element using normal findElement method

As per the Test Design Consideration following Page Object Design Pattern :
A Page Object is an object-oriented class that serves as an interface to a page of the Application Under Test. Your #Tests uses the methods of this Page Object class whenever they need to interact with the User Interface of that page. The benefit is that if the UI changes for the page your #Tests themselves don’t needs to be changed. Only the code within the Page Object needs to be changed.
Advantages :
Clean separation between test code and page specific code such as locators, methods and layout.
A single repository for the operations offered by the page rather than having these services scattered throughout the tests.
Based on these Page Factory features you won't be able to create any generic WebElement for which you can pass value dynamically from main() or #Test annotated method e.g.
#FindBy(xpath = '//input[#title='%s']')
private WebElement lnkElectronics;
You can find almost a similar discussion in Where should I define modal specific code in Selenium Page Object Model pattern

WorkAround : on page class you can define a method, and can pass the text on the fly from the calling class to click on specific tab
if you want to click any common text on the page. You can create a method as given below and can pass the text on the fly to click on that specific tab on that page
public void clickTab(String tabText){
String tabxpath = "//div[contains(text(), '" + tabText + "')]";
driver.findElement(By.xpath(tabxpath)).click();
}

Related

Initialize WebElements for part of a page

I'm following the Page Object model approach. I’m working on implementing a SearchResultsPage where a bunch of search results are displayed. In thinking about this page, I would like to implement it in such a way that it would support a getSearchResultByIndex(int index) method. Ideally, I would like the return type of this method to be a SearchResult, which would be a mini-page object (aka panel) that encapsulates the functionality found on a search result item since there are a number of attributes of a search result that the user can interact with. I don’t see how to accomplish this though. I was hoping to find a method like PageFactory.initElements() that would take in the WebDriver, a WebElement or selector (that identified an individual search result), and an instance of my SearchResult, but haven’t seen anything.
For clarity. Here's the basic structure of a SearchResults page.
<div class="searchResultsContainer">
<div class="searchResult">various internal fields to interact with/inspect</div>
<div class="searchResult">various internal fields to interact with/inspect</div>
...
<div class="searchResult">various internal fields to interact with/inspect</div>
</div>
It seems like this has to be a common problem out there that people have solved. I've used this "panel" notion for other common page elements like header, footer, etc, but never in the case where multiple instances of the same panel type are on the same page.
Any thoughts would be appreciated. Thanks.
If it were me I would approach it differently. I would split this into 2 page object classes. One for SearchResults, and one for SearchResultPage. The SearchResults would be the generic results list and actions you can take on those results. Within that class you would add a method to click on an individual search result, to pop up the details of that result, that would be what returns your SearchResultPage object.
Here is a rough sketch of what that method could look like inside your SearchResults page object. Not sure what language you are using but this is in C# (Java would be similar, Python much different but you'll get the general idea):
public SearchResultPage GetSearchResult()
{
// do something to click and show search details
return new SearchResultPage(_driver);
}
And then a skeleton of the SearchResultPage class object itself:
public class SearchResultPage
{
IWebDriver _driver;
// add whatever elements you want to work with specific to that single record view
//constructor
public SearchResultPage(IWebDriver driver)
{
_driver = driver;
}
// add whatever methods you want to interact with the elements in that view
}
The good thing about keeping the page objects separate in this case is SearchResults could actually be used in other areas of the application as well, if there are results on other pages that use the same elements etc. I find myself taking out common page elements (drop down menus, grids, etc) into their own objects all the time. Otherwise you end up repeating a lot of code if you stick to strict Page Object model where common functionality exists on multiple pages.
I think I've got this solved. I ended up abandoning PageFactory.initElements(), which I think I've learned is really key and likely an old-school way of implementing the page/object model. Adopting the use of By rather than FindBy seems to work much better as long as the appropriate conditional WebDriverWait.until(ExpectedConditions.elementToBeClickable(elementLocator)) is used.
After coming to this understanding, introducing the concept of a panel locator in my base Panel class allowed me to combine that locator with a nth-of-type(idx) locator to get things wired up and working as expected. Here's a simplified example of that in use in my SearchResultsPage:
public SearchResult getSearchResult(int idx) {
SearchResult res = new SearchResult(getWebDriver(),
By.cssSelector(".searchResultsContainer .seachResult:nth-of-type(" + idx + ")"));
return res;
}
My SearchResult class then just has a number of By locators defined that essentially call new ByChained(panelLocator, locator);
So glad to have solved this!

In the Page Object Model, why do we use Webelements instead of Strings as class variables?

Simply put: when implementing the POM framework we have Pagefactory initialize all the elements in a pageobject. Why do we do this instead of storing the xpath/css selectors as strings and calling those as needed instead?
ex:
#FindBy(xpath = "//Button[text()='Add and Edit']")
#CacheLookup
private WebElement addAndEdit;
vs
private String addAndEdit;
This is not defined as part of the page object model, this is defined by PageFactory which is a helper class in initializing elements in a page object. The intent there is to set up a proxy so that the element's location strategy is defined by the #FindBy and you can reference the WebElement and it will go look it up for you when you use the reference.
If you are going to store locators, don't store a string... store instead a By locator. It has the extra information of the TYPE of locator, e.g. By.id, By.cssSelector, etc. I think this is much cleaner approach and will prevent you from having to somehow determine what type of locator that string variable is. This is the approach I use in all the Selenium projects that I have written and/or maintain.
According to the Selenium contributors, PageFactory should not be used. See this yt video of Simon Stewart, Lead Committer, stating don't use it (27:26) and so on and why. The link starts the section that leads into his comments on PageFactory.

How to access a webelement in other class in POM - Selenium

I have 2 pages (landing page and registration page). In landing page, I am storing webelements using #FindBy annotations. I need to use the Webelements oflanding page in the registration page. How can I proceed?
You just need to create an object of the class and access it like variable
Suppose class A having #FindBy function and variable is suppose myelement
Then use (it is Java, try similar in whatever lang you are using):
A aobject= new A();
A.myelement;

How to move to geb page content that is not visible in the browser window?

How can I get the geb webdriver to move to an element on the page that may not be in the view of the browser. The element exists on the page and is displayed but there may be a possibility that the element will appear on the bottom of the page and the browser would need to scroll down in order to bring the element into view.
import geb.Page
class myPage extends Page {
static url = "mypage.xhtml"
static at = {title == "myPage"}
static content = {
someElement = {$("#bottomOfPage")}
anotherElement = {$(".someClass",5)}
}
void clickElement(){
//possibility to fail because element may not be displayed in browsers view
//if not in view, scroll to element, then click
someElement.click()
}
}
Using this page as an example, If an element is not in view on the page and possibly at the very bottom, how can I tell the webdriver to bring the element into view? I have some complicated tests that are failing when the page contents are not in view. In some cases, the driver will move to the element even if it's not in view. But I would like to explicitly tell the driver to move to an element if its not in view for the cases that it does not move on its own.
The selenium library does have a moveToElement() function but it only accepts objects of the WebElement class. Using geb, when creating page classes, all elements that are used in my tests are declared in the content section and thus are of the SimplePageContent class. SimplePageContent cannot be casted to a WebElement either. moveToElement(By.id("bottomOfPage")) does work but is not ideal because I do not want hard coded values. Id much rather pass the page content object itself if possible.
From my experience I can say that if you ask WebDriver to click on an element that is not currently in view it will first scroll to that element and then click on it. So you're either hitting some kind of bug if it does not happen or the fact that the element is not in view is not what's causing your element not to be clicked.
If you still want to move to the element explicitly using Actions.moveToElement() then you can easily turn objects returned from your content definition using the fact that they implement Navigator which comes with a firstElement() which you should use if you want to get the first WebElement of a multi element Navigator or singleElement() when your Navigator has exactly one WebElement.
There is also a simpler way, which won't require extracting WebElements from your Navigators - use an interact {} block:
interact {
moveToElement(someElement)
}

#FindBy doesn't care if the element isn't there when I call initElements

For instance, let's say I have class FanPage, with this annotation
#FindBy(how = How.ID, using = "ctl00__lvph_Add")
private WebElement _AddFanButton;
and then in my test code I say
fanPage = homePage.GoToFanPage()
which does
return PageFactory.initElements(driver, CC_VendorStatisticsMetadata.class);
Now if my annotation is incorrect (let's say it should be ctl00_lvph_AddFan), I would expect my call to initElements to fail. However, it doesn't and it simply returns a FanPage object to me. It only fails if I try to use _AddFanButton.
How do I get PageFactory to look for my annotations from the start?
You don't. The PageFactory does lazy initialization, and that's how it's designed.
Consider a Page Object where certain of your elements don't exist on the page until some action is taken. Since Page Objects are intended to encapsulate business logic and not just the elements on the page, this is a perfectly logical scenario. In that case, your initElements() call would fail on page object initialization every single time, and not give you the chance to call the business logic method that would cause the element to appear.
It's possible that the PageFactory will not work for you if this is a requirement for your test framework. In that case, you'd do well to construct your own implementation.