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Category: Selenium Automation Tips

WebDriver Mouse Action Methods

Selenium WebDriver Automation Tips

Selenium Webdriver is a tool for creating automation scripts of the web application. Webdriver makes direct calls to the browser using each browser’s native support for automation without depending on the server. Selenium Webdriver has introduced advanced User Interactions API, which includes actions such as drag and drops or clicking multiple elements while holding down the Control key.

In order to do action events we can use Actions class from Selenium WebDriver API.

WebDriver Action Methods

Command: click()
This method should be used to perform click action on the current mouse location


Command: click(WebElement target)
This method should be used to perform click action in the middle of the given element


Command: clickAndHold()
This method should be used to perform the click action at the current mouse location but without releasing the mouse click yet.


Command: clickAndHold(WebElement target)
This method should be used to perform the click action in the middle of the given element but without releasing the mouse click yet.


Command: contextClick()
This method should be used to perform a context-click action at the current mouse location.


Command: contextClick(WebElement target)
This method should be used to perform a context-click action at middle of the given element.


Command: doubleClick()
This method should be used to perform a double-click action at the current mouse location.


Command: doubleClick(WebElement target)
This method should be used to perform a double-click action at middle of the given element.


Command: dragAndDrop(WebElement source, WebElement target)
This method should be used to perform click-and-hold action at the location of the source element, moves to the location of the target element, then releases the mouse.


Command: dragAndDropBy(WebElement source, int xOffset, int yOffset)
This method should be used to perform click-and-hold action at the location of the source element, moves by a given offset, then releases the mouse.


Command: moveByOffset(int xOffset, int yOffset)
This method should be used to perform mouse move action from its current position by the given offset.


Command: moveToElement(WebElement target)
This method should be used to perform mouse move action to the middle of the given element.


Command: moveToElement(WebElement target, int xOffset, int yOffset)
This method should be used to perform mouse move action to an offset from the top-left corner of the element.


Command: release()
This method should be used to perform the action to release the depressed left mouse button at the current mouse location.

How to use WebDriver Waits in Selenium?

Selenium WebDriver Waits

Automation Engineers are exposed to work with multiple situations, one such item is to work situations when a particular scenario needs a lag due to various reasons be it WebElement to load, page to load, Element status to happen etc., Selenium provides you multiple opportunities to deal with situations

How to use WebDriver Waits in Selenium?

Implicit Wait – Are used to introduce a lag between two selenium commands.

Wait in Selenium, Wait, Selenium with Java, Selenium with C Sharp

Explicit Wait – Are used whenever selenium commands needs to wait for certain condition to occur or the timeout happens.

Wait in Selenium, Wait, Selenium with Java, Selenium with C Sharp

Further, there are many scenarios on how to implement, pros and cons of waits etc., for more information book a demo.

How To Identify Dynamic Elements In Selenium?

Dynamic Elements

In many cases, automation engineers are challenged to address the needs of ever-changing applications and one of the case is dynamic element where the element’s properties are changing frequently due to many factors. If such elements are involved in your automation script then identifying those elements become crucial and there is no direct approach to tackle the situation. Here we have listed down a few strategies which could be used depending on the situation

How to identify dynamic elements in Selenium?

  • Absolute X-Path strategy

An absolute X-Path is the complete path which starts from root element and goes until the element we need to identify

/html/body/div[3]/div/div[2]/div/div[1]/div/input

  • Relative X-Path strategy

Any path which starts with the current identified element is referred to as relative path

  • Using contains or starts with function – Example below

//input[starts-with(@id, ’Century’)]

//button[contains(@class, ‘Century’)]

  • Using multiple attributes – Example below

//input[contains(@id,’Century’)] [contains(@class, ‘Century123’)]

  • Using the Preceding or following elements – Example below

//button [contains(@class, ‘Century123’)] /following:: input[contains(@id,’Century’)]

//input [contains(@id,’CITS’)] /preceding:: button[contains(@class, ‘Century123’)]

  • Locating elements using index – Example below

ffdriver.findElements(By.tag(‘input’))[11]

ffdriver.findElements(By.xpath(//*[contains(@id, ‘Century’).get(3)

Parameterize Test Data – Selenium

In order to execute our automation scripts with multiple test data, you need to make use of parameterization. The intent of executing tests with multiple sets of test data is to ensure that various data doesn’t create issues during application usage.

How to Parameterize Test Data in Selenium?

Selenium tool doesn’t offer an inbuilt parameterizing option, rather you can consider parameterizing from an external source preferable Excel. In order to work with Excel file, we need to use API’s such as Apache POI or JXL.

Here is a sample code.

Parameterize Test Data in Selenium, Mathikere, Jayanagar, Malleshwaram, Rajajinagar

Close & Quit

WebDriver offers two methods know Close and Quit, both of them are used to exit the browser from current status. But why do we have two methods, well there is a difference between these two

What is the difference between WebDriver Close and Quit methods?

Close Quit
Close command is used to close the current active window in the browser. Quit command will close the entire browser irrespective of how many windows/tabs/pop-ups are open.
Preferred to use when test is dealing with multiple browser tabs or windows e.g. when a new tab is opened upon some action. To be used when the interaction with the driver object along with any associated window, tab or pop-up is not associated. One of the last statements of the automation scripts.
WebDriver.close() WebDriver.quit()

How to capture screen images during the execution in selenium?

TakesScreenshot

An Interface provided by Selenium to capture the screenshot of the window and store it in different forms.

Sample Code:

How to select values in dropdown using selenium?

Select Class in Selenium

A class in Selenium which provides various options to work with dropdown and multiselect element on the WebPage.

Some of the options provided by select class are

Sample Code

Alert In Selenium Automation

Alert

Alert is a window which pops-up based on some condition when Alert occurs the focus is moved to alert. During test automation, it is important to handle the alerts according to intended tests.

Selenium provides an interface known as “Alert” with different methods to operate on alert window like accept(), dismiss(), sendKeys() and getText()

How to handle alert window in selenium?

findElement and findElements

Both of these methods allow automation tester to find the WebElement on the page

findElement –

WebElement findElement(By by)

  • Finds the first matching element.
  • Throws NoSuchElementException if matching element with the specified locator is not found.
  • When implicitly waiting, The findElement invocation will return a matching row, or try again repeatedly until the configured timeout is reached.

Difference between findElement and findElements in Selenium?

findElements –

List<WebElement> findElements(By by)

  • Returns all the matching elements.
  • Returns an empty list if no matching elements found
  • No exception will be thrown if elements not found.
  • When implicitly waiting, this method will return as soon as there are more than 0 items in the found collection, or will return an empty list if the timeout is reached

Selenium Actions

“Actions” class in Selenium

One of the API’s from Selenium which is powerful enough to perform complex actions from the user. This class offers wide variety of methods to support the user actions for Key-Board and Mouse

KeyBoard Actions – KeyDown, KeyUp, SendKeys etc.,

Mouse Actions – Click, ContextClick, ClickandHold etc.,

Build and Perform Methods – Build is used to generate multiple actions together whereas perform is used to execute the action bundle.

How to perform complex user actions in selenium?

How to implement

1) Create an object of Actions class

2) Identify the sequence of actions to be performed on WebElement or just actions

3) use the build method to bundle the sequence of actions.

4) use the perform method to execute the actions.

Example below

Century IT Services