CODEWITHSUNDEEP
javaseleniumxpathselenium-webdriver
USer22999299
USer22999299

Reputation: 5674

Xpath from the current node using firefox webdriver in java

So i'm facing a small perforemence issue while using findElement(By.xpath("..."))

First i'm locating a ul element that contains around 20 li child. by using then on each of the child i'm locating the inner xpath to the information by using the following:

List<WebElement> addrBookNames = driver.findElements(By.xpath("//ul[@class='displayAddressUL']"));
for(WebElement addr : addrBookNames)
{
    String fullName = addr.findElement(By.xpath("li[@class='AddressFullName']/b")).getText();
    String addressLine = addr.findElement(By.xpath("li[@class='AddressAddressLine']")).getText();
    String city = addr.findElement(By.xpath("li[@class='AddressCity']")).getText();
    String county = addr.findElement(By.xpath("li[@class='country']")).getText();
    String phoneNumber = addr.findElement(By.xpath("li[@class='phone']")).getText();

}

The above code takes around 5 sec, checked it by using :

double stime = System.currentTimeMillis();
double TotalTime = System.currentTimeMillis() - stime;

before and after.

Is there anything wrong with the way i'm extracting the inner xpaths from the selected node?

Upvotes: 0

Views: 556

Answers (1)

eugene.polschikov
eugene.polschikov

Reputation: 7339

1) I would try as alternative CSS selector approach and create 5 WebElement Lists ( already in split representation for searched fields):

List<WebElement> fullNames = driver.findELements(By.cssSelector("ul.displayAddressUL li.AddressFullName>b"));
List<WebElement> addressLines= driver.findELements(By.cssSelector("ul.displayAddressUL li.AddressAddressLine"));
List<WebElement> cities= driver.findELements(By.cssSelector("ul.displayAddressUL li.AddressCity"));
List<WebElement> countries=driver.findELements(By.cssSelector("ul.displayAddressUL li.country"));
List<WebElement> phoneNums=driver.findELements(By.cssSelector("ul.displayAddressUL li.phone"));

for (int i=0;i<fullNames.size(); i++){
String fullName= fullNames.get(i).getText();
String addressLine =addressLines.get(i).getText();
String city = cities.get(i).getText();
String county = countries.get(i).getText();
String phoneNumber = phoneNums.get(i).getText();
}

Also I'd like to add: CSS selectors perform far better than Xpath and it is well documented in Selenium community. Here are some reasons,

  • Xpath engines are different in each browser, hence make them inconsistent
  • IE does not have a native xpath engine, therefore selenium injects its own xpath engine for compatibility of its API. Hence we lose the advantage of using native browser features that WebDriver inherently promotes.
  • Xpath tend to become complex and hence make hard to read in my opinion However there are some situations where, you need to use xpath, for example, searching for a parent element or searching element by its text (I wouldn't recommend the later).

More details on performance comparison you can get here

2) another alternative approach that I would recommend as mentioned here try to use HtmlUnitDriver, that will definitely increase your performance; OR: to use pure js wrapped by Javascipt executor for text extraction like:

 String elem_css_selector="blablabla...";
 JavascriptExecutor js = (JavascriptExecutor) driver;
        StringBuilder stringBuilder = new StringBuilder();

stringBuilder.append("var x = $(\""+elem_css_selector+"\");");
        stringBuilder.append("return x.text().toString();")       ;


       String resultingText= (String) js.executeScript(stringBuilder.toString());
       Assert.assertTrue(resultingText.trim().equals("Expected Text")   );

Upvotes: 3

Related Questions